27% Ghosted Mid-Project: Client Ghosting on Invoices [2026 Data]

26.6% of freelancers have been ghosted by a client after a project was already underway, and 48.5% were ghosted before one even started, according to Leapers’ 2025 Mental Health in Freelancing Report, a survey of 1,013 UK self-employed workers. Client ghosting on invoices, a customer who goes fully silent rather than disputing, delaying, or refusing to pay, is a distinct failure mode from ordinary late payment, and it responds to different fixes. This is the 2026 data on how often it happens, what it costs, and what actually gets a silent client to respond.

Figure 1: Ghosting hits before a project even starts more often than after, but a meaningful share of freelancers are cut off mid-relationship too. Source: Leapers, 2025 Mental Health in Freelancing Report.

How Common Is Client Ghosting on Invoices?

More common than most freelancers expect going in. Leapers’ 2025 survey of 1,013 UK self-employed workers, fielded between October and November 2025, found 48.5% had experienced a client going silent before a project even commenced, and 26.6% had experienced it after a project was already underway, close enough to invoicing time that the client’s silence and the unpaid invoice are usually the same event. The survey is self-selecting and unweighted rather than a probability sample, which the report itself flags, so treat the exact percentages as directional for the freelance population broadly rather than a precise national figure. What the two numbers agree on is the shape of the problem: going quiet is more common at the proposal stage than mid-project, but mid-project ghosting is still common enough that more than a quarter of respondents have lived through it at least once.

What’s the Difference Between Ghosting and Just Being Late?

Whether the client ever replies at all. Leapers tracked the two separately rather than lumping them together, and the numbers move in opposite directions: 67.5% of respondents experienced ordinary late payment, more than double the 26.6% who were ghosted mid-project, while 26.4% experienced outright non-payment, a number close to the ghosting rate itself. A late-paying client is still answering emails, offering excuses, or asking for more time, all of which give a business something to work with. A ghosting client removes that entirely: no dispute is raised, no new date is promised, the thread just stops. On the US side, Intuit QuickBooks’s 2025 Small Business Late Payments Report, based on a January 2025 survey of 2,487 US small businesses, found 56% currently owed money on unpaid invoices, averaging $17,500 per business, and 47% of those businesses had invoices at least 30 days past due, a population where both late payment and outright silence are almost certainly mixed together under one “unpaid” label.

Figure 2: Ghosting is a distinct minority of payment problems next to ordinary late payment, but it is not rare. Source: Leapers, 2025 Mental Health in Freelancing Report.

How Much Does Client Ghosting Actually Cost?

Most of the time, less than it feels like in the moment, but the tail end is real money. Atradius’s 2025 Payment Practices Barometer found 52% of US B2B invoice value paid on time, 43% overdue, and 5% written off as bad debt outright, the share that survives every reminder, every follow-up, and every deadline without ever being paid. That 5% is the number client ghosting is actually competing against: most unpaid invoices eventually get paid late rather than never, but the invoices attached to a client who has gone fully silent are disproportionately likely to end up in that final, uncollectible bucket. For a US small business already carrying an average $17,500 in unpaid invoices per the QuickBooks data above, a client who stops responding entirely is the version of that balance most at risk of becoming a permanent loss rather than a delayed payment.

Figure 3: Most invoice value gets paid, late or otherwise; the write-off share is small, but it’s the outcome ghosting risks becoming. Source: Atradius, Payment Practices Barometer, US 2025.

Why Do Clients Go Silent Instead of Just Saying They Can’t Pay?

Because saying it out loud is its own kind of hard conversation, on both sides of the invoice. Leapers’ data on stress makes the asymmetry visible: 81.2% of freelancers who experienced late payment reported at least some added stress, and 50.8% of those who experienced non-payment reported the same, meaning the freelancer side of a stalled invoice is consistently uncomfortable enough that people delay chasing it, not just the client side delays paying it. A client avoiding an awkward “we can’t pay this right now” message and a freelancer avoiding an awkward “where’s my money” follow-up produce the identical outcome from the outside: silence. That mutual avoidance is part of why ghosting survives as a category distinct from a client who explicitly disputes an invoice or negotiates a new payment date, covered in BillyPaid’s invoice dispute data for 2026; a dispute is at least a conversation. Ghosting is the absence of one.

Is Ghosting Really Client Silence, or a Follow-Up Gap?

Sometimes it’s the business’s own process, not the client, that goes quiet first. Chaser’s 2026 Accounts Receivable Report found that around 80% of unpaid invoices are still collectible by email alone, without ever escalating to a phone call or a collections referral, yet the same report found 31% of businesses admit they don’t chase every invoice they’re owed, leaving some overdue invoices completely uncontacted rather than genuinely ghosted by an unresponsive client. That distinction matters for what “fixing” ghosting actually means: for the 31% gap, the fix is a reminder that goes out automatically instead of depending on someone remembering to send it, which is exactly what a payment reminder generator that runs on a fixed schedule is built to close. For the client who genuinely never responds despite repeated, well-timed follow-up, see BillyPaid’s payment reminder effectiveness data, which breaks down how much of the 31% gap disappears once every invoice gets chased on a consistent cadence.

Figure 4: A meaningful share of “ghosted” invoices never actually got a reminder in the first place. Source: Chaser, 2026 Accounts Receivable Report.

What Actually Gets a Silent Client to Respond?

Specificity, more than persistence alone. FreshBooks’s analysis of more than 1 million small business invoices found reminders that state a late fee or an “Interest” note are ultimately paid 92.15% of the time, and those naming a firm 14-day term follow closely at 91.51%, both well ahead of the 78.62% baseline for invoices and reminders carrying no special wording at all. A vague nudge is easy for a silent client to keep ignoring; a message that states a number, a date, and a consequence is harder to leave unanswered, which is the same mechanism BillyPaid’s friendly vs firm reminder data covers for the wording question specifically. Timing compounds the effect: Chaser’s 2026 report found a structured, multi-stage reminder cadence collects 78% of invoices by day 15 past due, compared with 52% for ad hoc, single-email follow-up, and automating that cadence closes the gap further, with businesses using AR automation software getting paid within two weeks 71% of the time versus 47% for manual sending.

Figure 5: Naming a specific fee or term consistently outperforms vague or silent wording at getting a reply. Source: FreshBooks, analysis of 1M+ invoices.

What Happens When a Client Never Responds at All?

The reminder sequence escalates, and eventually the conversation stops being polite. If a structured cadence of friendly, then firm, then final-notice wording produces no reply at all, the next step is a direct, plainly worded message rather than another automated nudge, covered in full in BillyPaid’s how to ask for payment politely data. Past that point, a client who still hasn’t responded moves toward a formal demand and, if needed, a legal claim, the same escalation ladder BillyPaid’s cluster of reminder and collections posts tracks stage by stage. The businesses in the QuickBooks data with 47% of their overdue invoices already 30 days or more past due are exactly the population where this ladder gets used most: enough time has passed that a friendly reminder has clearly already failed.

Ghosting and Payment Problems, Side by Side

Problem	Share who experienced it	Share who found it stressful
Ghosted before a project started	48.5%	not tracked separately
Ghosted after a project started	26.6%	not tracked separately
Late payment (client still responds)	67.5%	81.2%
Excessive payment terms (60+ days)	43.4%	66.4%
Non-payment (outright)	26.4%	50.8%

Table 1: Ghosting is tracked as its own category, distinct from late payment and non-payment, in the same 2025 UK freelancer survey. Source: Leapers, 2025 Mental Health in Freelancing Report.

The Bottom Line

Client ghosting on invoices is real and specific enough to measure on its own: 26.6% of freelancers have had a client go silent mid-project, and 48.5% have had it happen before a project even started, according to Leapers’ 2025 survey of UK self-employed workers. But the 2026 data also complicates the instinct to treat every unpaid invoice as a client problem. Around a third of the time, per Chaser, the business itself never sent a reminder in the first place, and when a reminder does go out, naming a specific fee or deadline lifts the paid rate from a 78.62% baseline to 92.15%. The invoices that survive every reminder stage and still go unanswered are the ones most at risk of becoming the 5% Atradius found written off as bad debt in 2025, which is the real cost client ghosting is worth guarding against. A BillyPaid payment reminder runs that full cadence automatically on every invoice, so a silent client is responding to a consistent, specifically worded sequence rather than whatever someone remembered to send.

Frequently Asked Questions

How common is it for a client to ghost you after work has started? 26.6% of freelancers say they have been ghosted by a client after a project was already underway, and 48.5% say they have been ghosted before a project even began, according to Leapers’ 2025 Mental Health in Freelancing Report, a survey of 1,013 UK self-employed workers.

Is client ghosting the same thing as late payment? No. The same Leapers survey tracked them separately: 67.5% of respondents experienced ordinary late payment, versus 26.6% who were ghosted mid-project and 26.4% who experienced outright non-payment. Late payment still gets a response, just a slow one; ghosting and non-payment mean the client stops replying at all.

What happens to invoices that never get paid at all? A small but real share become uncollectible outright. Atradius’s 2025 Payment Practices Barometer found 52% of US B2B invoice value paid on time, 43% overdue, and 5% written off as bad debt, the true end state of an invoice nobody ever answers for.

Does following up actually work on a client who has gone quiet? Often, yes. Chaser’s 2026 Accounts Receivable Report found around 80% of unpaid invoices are still collectible by email alone, and reminders that name a stated late fee or deadline are paid 92.15% of the time, per FreshBooks’s analysis of more than 1 million invoices, versus a 78.62% baseline for wording with no specifics.

Sources and References

1. Leapers: 2025 Mental Health in Freelancing Report (self-selecting online survey of 1,013 UK self-employed workers, fielded October 1 - November 15, 2025), ghosting before and after a project started, late payment, excessive payment terms, non-payment, and associated stress rates.
2. Intuit QuickBooks: 2025 Small Business Late Payments Report (January 2025 wave of the Small Business Insights survey, 2,487 US small businesses with 0-100 employees), share of US small businesses owed money, average amount owed, and share with invoices 30+ days overdue.
3. Atradius, Payment Practices Barometer, US (2025), US paid-on-time/overdue/bad-debt split.
4. Chaser: The 2026 Accounts Receivable Report (163 validated responses, UK/Australia-led, fielded late 2025-early 2026), email-alone collectibility, follow-up completeness, structured-cadence collection rate, and AR automation data.
5. FreshBooks: Use Your Invoice Payment Terms to Get Paid Faster (analysis of 1M+ small business invoices over a 1-year period), ultimate paid rate by invoice and reminder wording.

Note: All figures verified as of October 2026.