Show HN: Software Freelancers Contract Template
15 comments
·September 22, 2025srameshc
Very well done. Since this is open source, it can be customized further to make it country specific with contributions.
psyklic
Nice job! As a US-based consultant, I've found it's always best if you immediately suggest a contract. This way you can ensure it starts with terms favorable for you.
I've also found it's pedagogically helpful to have two versions of each contract, a consultant-favored and consultee-favored. This way you can understand how each clause may be tweaked to benefit each party. For example, this book does this (US-based): https://www.amazon.com/Consultant-Independent-Contractor-Agr...
baobabKoodaa
> helpful to have two versions of each contract, a consultant-favored and consultee-favored
Or, even better, instead of having only two versions of a contract, we can offer this choice on individual clauses within the contract. On some clauses the parties may choose to go with consultant-favored option whereas on some other clauses the parties may choose to go with client-favored option. This is what we ended up doing with the generator :)
vedmaka
That's very helpful! Do you have any plans to open-source this?
baobabKoodaa
Everything is open-sourced: https://github.com/Ohjelmistofriikit/contract-generator
sneak
This is designed only for Finland. The jurisdiction popup lists only Finnish options.
It should probably be clearer that this is only useful for Finns.
baobabKoodaa
The big text below the title says "Legally sound contract for direct assignment between freelancer and end client in Finland". I also explained the connection to Finland in OP and explained in OP why it might be useful for persons outside of Finland.
Oleh_h
That’s a useful thing.
chickenzzzzu
How does one get inbound/outbound leads for hourly or project work from companies that aren't scammers or tirekickers?
baobabKoodaa
Freelancers mostly work intermediated assignments rather than direct assignments. These intermediators have put up what are essentially job boards. If you are well connected, you can get direct assignments via your contacts, or by reaching out like traditional sales work. If there are some avenues to get leads for direct assignments, I would be really interested to find out!
chickenzzzzu
Thanks for your feedback on this :)
In the USA, if some big and usually "non tech" company like McDonalds or T-Mobile wants to staff a whole project with programmers, they will usually have a relationship with someone like Infosys, Tata, Slalom, perhaps even Hitachi or Tech Mahindra or Accenture/Deloitte. These companies all pay you like a regular employee so you don't need your own drafted employment contract or business entity.
If you howver have a github/youtube channel/website where you make and release your own software, and someone contacts you saying "hello we want to pay you to add more features and or fix some problem for us", then you will need a contract and usually a business entity unless you don't mind being personally sued into the ground.
Such reachouts are very very rare unless your software has gone viral in the right circles, but I personally know at least 20 people who make a full time living this way. It seems pretty unenviable, and corporations whose email domain you would recognize routinely pull support or play egregious games with the definition of done. No cure for life, I guess :)
baobabKoodaa
Large consultancies like Tata also operate in Finland + we also have a bunch of our own consultancies that operate in this manner (their consultants are regular employees of the consultancy). Earlier when I mentioned job boards for freelancers, it is particularly these large consultancies that subcontract down to freelancers via job boards (they try to fill positions from their bench, and when they are unable, they subcontract to other consultancies or freelancers).
trallnag
What type of contract is most common with software freelancers in Finnland? In Germany we usually differentiate between getting booked by the hour or goal based contracts. I think in the last decade(s) the trend has drifted towards the former. Note that I'm probably using the wrong English terms to describe this
baobabKoodaa
Hour based contracts are by far more common than goal based contracts in Finland. Both types are supported in our template.
null
I started working as a freelancer [in Finland] a year ago and was surprised to learn that no decent contract template was available for direct assignments. There were some free contract templates available for intermediated assignments, but not for direct assignments. The "golden standard" of contract templates in Finland is an extremely heavy-handed and expensive template that costs ~500€ PER YEAR to use. Personally at the time I decided to just do a DIY contract for my first freelancing project.
Over time, as I got more engaged in the Finnish freelancing community, I realized that many people struggled with the same issue. After discussing this in our freelancing co-op Ohjelmistofriikit, we decided to invest both time and money into solving this problem. We decided right from the start that we were gonna open source everything and give it out for free.
We first developed a traditional document template in collaboration with a law firm. After that we developed a web generator that makes it easy to fill out the template. The user flow of the generator is designed to eliminate boilerplate-type work (such as hiding sections instead of showing "skip this section if condition X does not apply to you") and also to reduce mistakes users might make when editing a traditional document template (such as copypasting something incorrectly).
Although the legalese is designed for the Finnish jurisdiction, the contract template can be useful as an example for similar work in other jurisdictions.
Go ahead and draft a contract right there in your browser!