Kill fee
The agreed payment you keep if the client cancels mid-project. Insurance for the work you did and the calendar you blocked.
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What it is
A kill fee is the payment you are owed when a client cancels a project you have already started. The term comes from magazines, where a commissioned article that got 'killed' before publication still earned the writer a percentage. Studios, developers and film crews borrowed it because the problem is identical: you blocked the calendar, turned other work away, and the reason it died is not yours.
Reach for it in any fixed-price contract with a real time commitment. Common shapes: a flat percentage of the remaining fee (25 to 50 percent), everything completed to date plus the next milestone, or a sliding scale where cancelling early costs less than cancelling in week six. It sits next to the non-refundable deposit rather than replacing it: the deposit covers the start, the kill fee covers the hole left in your schedule.
Gotcha: a kill fee you have to sue for is not protection. Make it collectable by invoicing work to date plus the fee immediately on notice of termination, keeping the number modest enough that paying feels easier than fighting, and stating what the client actually receives for it. A client who simply goes silent still owes you for work already done and may well be in breach, but silence makes your termination remedies awkward to invoke because nobody has terminated anything. Define abandonment expressly (no substantive response for N days counts as termination by the client) while keeping payment for completed work owed either way.
Ask AI for it
Write a termination and kill fee clause for a freelance project contract that separates three cases and treats them differently. One: the client terminates for convenience, or abandons the project, defined as no substantive response for 21 consecutive days after a written request. Two: I terminate because the client is in breach (unpaid invoice or a missed dependency) and has not cured it within the notice period. Three: I terminate for my own reasons with no client breach. Apply the kill fee, 30 percent of the remaining unbilled fee, only in cases one and two, never in case three. In every case the client still owes all work completed to date at the agreed rate. Require 10 days written notice, credit the non-refundable deposit once against the final total rather than against each line, invoice immediately with net 7 terms, and transfer deliverables and IP once that invoice clears. State plainly that no kill fee is payable where my own uncured breach caused the termination. Plain English, numbered clauses, no Latin.