Freelance Careers Guide – Licenses, Ranks, Pay, Ratings & Delivery
Freelancing in inZOI looks fairly straightforward at first: get a license, accept a commission and complete the requested work.
After testing Writer, Programming, Media Production, Composer and Delivery, however, I found that there is quite a bit happening underneath — particularly with Freelancer ranks, Trust, client satisfaction, Ratings, Tips and the surprisingly large difference between the advertised commission and the amount actually paid.
Quick Summary
- Creative Freelance licenses require Skill Level 3 in the corresponding skill; Delivery has no skill requirement.
- Freelancer rank is separate for every license. Expert Writer does not make you Expert Programmer.
- Reaching Expert requires 40 completed contracts per license.
- Successful contracts usually gave me +8–9 Trust, so contract count rather than Trust is normally the real progression bottleneck.
- The advertised commission is not the final payout. Actual earnings are usually higher, especially at Advanced and Expert rank.
- Writer, Programming, Media Production and Composer pay very similarly at the same rank, so the most profitable one is usually the skill your Zoi can complete fastest.
- Client calls appear to influence hidden customer satisfaction, Rating and probably final payment / Tips.
- Delivery requires no creative work and can be very fast, but contracts are not continuously available throughout the day.
Licenses & Freelancer Progression
| License | Requirement | Contract |
|---|---|---|
 Writer |
Skill Level 3 | Create requested work • 24h deadline |
 Programming |
Skill Level 3 | Create requested work • 24h deadline |
 Media Production |
Skill Level 3 | Create requested work • 24h deadline |
 Composer |
Skill Level 3 | Create requested work • 24h deadline |
 Delivery |
No skill requirement | Pick up + deliver • usually 3–5h deadline |
To obtain a license:
Apply at PC → Under Review for ~2 hours → license is approved → Beginner commissions unlock
Each license has its own progression:
| Rank | Requirement |
|---|---|
| Beginner | License approved |
| Intermediate | 5 contracts + 10 Trust |
| Advanced | 20 contracts total + 50 Trust |
| Expert | 40 contracts total + 80 Trust |
Once Expert is reached, the progression requirement disappears because Expert is the maximum Freelancer rank.
Trust
Most completed contracts gave me around +8 or +9 Trust, regardless of license or rank.
That means Trust is rarely the limiting factor. By the time the required number of contracts is reached, I normally already have far more Trust than necessary.
So in practice the real progression gates are simply:
5 → 20 → 40 completed contracts
And because rank is per license, those 40 contracts have to be completed separately for Writer, Programming, Media Production, Composer and Delivery.
The My Information page in the Freelancer app also tracks overall Freelancer Rating, total completed contracts, total Freelancer earnings and number of licenses owned across all categories.
Creative Freelance Contracts
Writer, Programming, Media Production and Composer all use essentially the same system:
Accept commission → create requested work → respond to client requests → deliver → receive payment + Tip + Trust
Creative contracts normally give 24 hours to complete the work.
Production time depends on the skill
The Freelancer system does not add a special fixed production time.
The requested work takes exactly as long as that Zoi would normally need to create the corresponding work at their current skill level.
This means contract efficiency can vary dramatically depending on:
- Skill Level
- the type of work
- relevant traits
- normal production speed for that skill
A high-level Zoi may complete a work very quickly, while the same kind of contract can take much longer if the Zoi is at the minimum Level 3 requirement.
For detailed creation times and trait effects, see my corresponding Critical Thinking, Programming, Media Production and Instrument guides.
This is important when comparing licenses, because their payments are very similar:
The best Creative Freelance license is usually the one matching the skill my Zoi can produce work with fastest.
Client Calls, Satisfaction & Rating
During Creative contracts, the client may call and give you directions.
The game gives some context about what the client wants and lets us choose between different responses — or ignore the call entirely.
There is no visible numerical customer-satisfaction score afterwards. Instead, the client’s final message gives an indication of how well the work matched their expectations.
For example:
“Even the payment features work perfectly. I’ve never seen quality like this.”
compared with:
“I received the shopping app. The basics are there, but… some of the details are a bit lacking.”
Even when I completed every contract, my Freelancer Rating generally settled around 4.5 rather than 5.0.
That strongly suggests that merely completing the contract is not enough for maximum satisfaction. Ignoring a call or choosing an option that does not match what the client wanted appears to result in weaker feedback and probably contributes to the lower Rating.
I also suspect this affects final payment and/or Tips, although the game does not expose enough information for me to derive an exact formula.
Advertised Commission vs. Actual Pay
One of the most surprising Freelancer mechanics is that the commission shown in the app is not the amount the client ultimately pays.
Writer, Media Production, Composer and Programming all use very similar advertised payment tiers, while the final payout is often considerably higher.
| Rank | Advertised commission by license | Overall displayed range in App | Observed final payout incl. Tip* |
|---|---|---|---|
| Beginner | Writer 251–329 • Media 245–297 • Composer 289–332 • Programming 244–332 | 244–332 | 322–492 |
| Intermediate | Writer 355–450 • Media 378–439 • Composer 357–436 • Programming 366–446 | 355–450 | 388–685 |
| Advanced | Writer 468–548 • Media 462–498 • Composer 462–504 • Programming 479–546 | 462–548 | 721–890 |
| Expert | Writer 591–633 • Media 596–648 • Composer 586–612 • Programming 537–638 | 537–648 | 961–1,092 |
*Final payout = actual client payment + Tip.
The four Creative licenses therefore occupy essentially the same payment tiers. I did not find one that consistently pays substantially more than the others.
A few examples show how large the gap between advertised and actual pay can become:
- Beginner Media Production: 245 advertised → 352 payment + 94 Tip = 446
- Advanced Programming: 471 advertised → 816 payment + 74 Tip = 890
- Expert Writer: 625 advertised → 1,017 payment + 75 Tip = 1,092
By Expert rank, a commission advertised at only around 600 Mew can therefore result in roughly 1,000 Mew before the Tip is even added.
Tips varied considerably, usually by tens of Mew and occasionally reaching around 100 Mew. Hidden client satisfaction probably contributes to that variation, but I could not establish a reliable formula.
I would therefore treat the Freelancer App number as an advertised commission / estimate rather than the final reward.
Delivery Freelancing
Delivery works very differently from the four Creative licenses.
There is no skill requirement and no work has to be created.
The process is simply:
Accept job → travel to first Zoi → collect item → travel to second Zoi → deliver
The deadline is usually around 3–5 Zoi hours.
The actual job itself can generally be completed in around one Zoi hour or less, depending mainly on where the two Zois are located. Some are considerably faster.
A car helps
Because almost the entire job consists of travelling, transportation matters.
Without a car, quite a lot of time can disappear into running to bus stops, walking between stops and destinations, and waiting at pedestrian crossings.
A car therefore makes Delivery noticeably more convenient and efficient.
Delivery availability
Delivery jobs are not permanently available.
I never saw a complete selection waiting at 9 AM. Instead, jobs begin appearing gradually as the day progresses, and they do not necessarily appear all at once.
Sometimes only one or two contracts are available simultaneously.
At around 6 PM, new Night Deliveries begin appearing. These are much more predictable — I usually saw approximately one Night Delivery for each Freelancer rank.
Delivery commission ranges
| Rank | Day – displayed | Night – displayed |
|---|---|---|
| Beginner | 154–229 | 208–220 |
| Intermediate | 246–293 | 244–260 |
| Advanced | 350–351 | 332–350 |
| Expert | 420–427 | 400–416 |
As with Creative commissions, the amount shown in the app can be much lower than the actual reward.
At Expert rank, I saw Delivery contracts ultimately pay around 1,000 Mew even though the displayed commission was only around 400 Mew.
I do not have enough directly paired Delivery measurements to give a reliable final-payout range or multiplier, so I would not try to derive an exact formula yet.
Which Freelance License Is Best?
For the four Creative licenses, there is no clear winner based on pay alone.
Writer, Programming, Media Production and Composer all use nearly identical commission tiers.
The deciding factor is therefore production speed.
If a Zoi can complete Programming works much faster than compositions, Programming will be the stronger Freelancer option for that Zoi even though the commissions themselves are similar.
So my rule for Creative Freelancing is:
Choose the license matching the Zoi’s strongest and fastest skill.
What about Delivery?
Delivery can be exceptionally efficient on a per-contract basis because:
- no skill is required
- there is no work-production phase
- many jobs take around an hour or less
- Expert payouts can still become surprisingly high
Its disadvantage is availability.
Creative contracts are much easier to plan around, while Delivery depends on which jobs have appeared at that point in the day.
So a practical approach is:
Use the Creative license matching my Zoi’s fastest skill, and take Delivery jobs when good ones are available.
Final Takeaway
Freelancing is considerably more lucrative than the numbers shown in the Freelancer App initially suggest.
Creative Beginner commissions advertised around 250–330 Mew can already end up paying close to 500 Mew, while Expert contracts advertised around 550–650 Mew regularly reached roughly 1,000 Mew total in my tests.
The four Creative licenses pay so similarly that skill efficiency matters more than the license itself.
Delivery offers a very different alternative: fast, skill-free contracts with potentially excellent real payouts, but limited and time-dependent availability.
So Freelancing can be an excellent source of income, but becoming Expert in everything is definitely a long-term project.
