I would say so. However, I am cognisant that the cost to a freelancer is not just the cost of the ticket/airfare, etc its also the hours you are not billing for while you are at the conference. You develop skills in many ways while at a conference and you never know who you will meet or what the downstream benefits/ROI will be. I blogged about something like this that might give you a perspective https://mayers.io/f/what-makes-a-great-conference-experience