When it comes to freelance, it really depends on your connections, the hotness of your skillset (i.e. seasoned mobile developer can pretty much write their ticket), and their ability to not work and be picky.
There is a lot of bottom feeding going on in the free lance space from companies to body shops. If you need a job, you’re not going to get paid well. If you have a job , you can continue to push you wage scale up.
That said, freelance pays better for developer types than FTE. FTE pays better than freelance for support/admin types if you can manage your hours. If you can’t, the hourly pay works out better as you start to bill 60 hours a week.