East Anglia, not London, is the best place to get paid as a sole trader, according to research By Crunch Accounting, which also shows fast growth in pay for self-employed people across the North East and Wales.

Micro-businesses in the North East – home to the cities of Newcastle, Sunderland, Durham and Middlesbrough – are charging nearly 50% more per job than they were just two years ago.

The research took into account responses from 4,700 one-person companies across the UK and found rates of pay also rising quickly in Wales and the South West of England, where rates have jumped 31% and 28% respectively.

In East Anglia, currently top of the pay pile, freelancers charge £318 per day on average, £13 more than they do in London. Pay in the capital has inched up just 6% on average in two years despite sky-high living costs – though this is a faster rate than for many salaried employees.

Among the worst places to try and become a rich freelancer is the North West, where pay slumped £30 to £260 a day since 2013. In the East Midlands, pay has also slipped 1.3% in two years.

Darren Fell, CEO of Crunch, said: “We sourced this data to better understand how incomes are changing amongst the country’s freelance workforce, and with the data drawing on more than 1.8 million billed freelance days, this provides a definitive rates guide for the one man band businesses.

“It’s great to see business confidence is on the rise amongst the self-employed, a group that historically undervalues their services. These figures confirm what we have long understood here at Crunch, that the self-employed are leading the country’s economic recovery and it’s high time they received greater political support and recognition.”

There are around 4.6 million self-employed people in the UK, the highest number ever recorded. Records began 40 years ago.