What Is a Kill Fee in Design?

A kill fee is a partial payment owed to a designer if a client cancels or ends a project before it's completed — compensating for work already done and time reserved, even though the full deliverable was never finished.

It's a standard, reasonable protection for designers, since accepting a project often means turning down other work during that time — a kill fee clause is typically a percentage of the total project fee, scaled to how much work had already been completed at the point of cancellation.

Checking for a kill fee clause before signing a contract is worth doing on the client side too, so cancellation terms aren't a surprise if circumstances change mid-project.