FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 24, 2026 — The WP Community Collective has published the first versioned pay framework for open source contribution work.
The WP Community Collective was founded to focus on the issue of open source contributor labor. We’ve funded contributors through our fellowship programs, we’ve had hard conversations about what fair pay looks like across different roles and locations, and we’ve built the infrastructure to do it equitably. Now, we’re making that framework public.
The WPCC is pleased to announce version 1.0 of The WP Community Collective Open Source Contributor Compensation Standard.
About The Standard
The Standard is a five-level pay framework that establishes baseline hourly rates for open source contributors working as employees or contractors. It covers roles across the full spectrum of open source work, with separate rates for W-2 employees and 1099 contractors.
| Level | Employee Rate | Contractor Rate |
|---|---|---|
| Level 1 – Entry / Foundation | $50/hr | $61/hr |
| Level 2 – Professional / Mid-Level | $70/hr | $85/hr |
| Level 3 – Senior / Advanced | $80/hr | $98/hr |
| Level 4 – Specialist / Leadership | $95/hr | $116/hr |
| Level 5 – Architect / Executive | $115/hr | $140/hr |
Rates are anchored to Los Angeles, CA, and paired with our published Global Pay Parity process so contributors anywhere in the world can be paid the locally equivalent rate.
Why We’re Publishing It
Since its inception, contributor compensation in open source has been a historical pain point for the open source ecosystem. In a culture underwritten by volunteerism, there has been no shared language, no baseline expectation, and no accountability around pay rates. Organizations that want to fairly compensate contributors have not had an established starting point, and sponsors who want to fund contributor time have had to guess at what constitutes a reasonable sponsorship level. Contributors themselves, particularly those from underrepresented communities or less wealthy regions and in the weakest position to negotiate, have had to rationalize their compensation requests without a reference point.
A published, versioned Standard provides that common reference point across the open source ecosystem. The Standard will make it easier for contributors to ask for fair compensation and for sponsors and organizations to budget for contributor work. It also makes the open source ecosystem more equitable by surfacing what reasonable and fair compensation actually looks like.
The WPCC used earlier, informal versions of this framework to structure our own fellowship compensation. Now we’re making it an open source public resource, something any organization in the open source ecosystem can adopt, adapt, or build on.
We’re also committing to reviewing and updating the Standard annually, incorporating changes in market rates, cost of living, and member and community input. Version history and changelogs will be maintained publicly in The WPCC’s GitHub repository:
How to Use It
The Standard is available as a free PDF download:
The Standard is also available on GitHub with documented version control and changelogs:
The Standard is published as an open resource under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC 4.0. You’re welcome to:
- Reference it when budgeting for contributor work
- Adopt it as the pay framework for your contributor program or paid contributor initiative
- Share it with organizations that fund or sponsor open source contributors
- Adapt it to your organization’s context, with attribution to The WPCC
If your organization adopts or build upon the Standard, please let us know. Public adoption helps establish ecosystem-wide norms, and hearing how it gets used in practice will inform how we update it.
Get Involved
The WPCC exists to advocate for contributor sustainability across the open source ecosystem. The Compensation Standard is one piece of that, alongside our fellowship programs, our governance work, and our ongoing advocacy for treating contributor time as the real economic value it is.
If you have feedback on the Standard or are interested in supporting The WPCC’s work, reach out at ceo@thewpcommunitycollective.com.
Download the Standard (PDF) →
View the Standard online →
The WP Community Collective Open Source Contributor Compensation Standard is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International license. Version 1.0, March 2026.
This license requires that reusers give credit to the creator. It allows reusers to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in any medium or format, for noncommercial purposes only.