Freelance Rate Calculator

Most freelancers price off a salary number and quietly lose money to tax, expenses and unpaid weeks. This works backwards from what you actually need to keep.

Your numbers

$
$
%
wk
hr
%

What you need to charge

$0
per billable hour
Day rate (8 billable hrs)—
Week rate (25 billable hrs)—
Billable hours per year—
Revenue you must invoice—
— tax at 28%—
— business expenses—
— buffer—
= take-home—

Rounded up to a clean number. Your rate card should be a price, not a formula — pick the nearest sensible figure above this line, never below it.

How the calculation works

The rate is built backwards from take-home pay, in this order:

  1. Working weeks = 52 − your weeks off.
  2. Billable hours per year = working weeks × billable hours per week.
  3. Revenue needed = (take-home ÷ (1 − tax rate)) + expenses, then increased by your buffer.
  4. Hourly rate = revenue needed ÷ billable hours per year.

The three mistakes that wreck freelance pricing

1. Dividing a salary by 2,080 hours

A salaried year is 2,080 hours, but an employer also covers holiday, sick leave, payroll taxes, hardware, software and downtime between projects. Taking a $70,000 salary and charging $34/hour hands all of that back for free. On the defaults above, the same take-home needs roughly double that rate.

2. Counting every working hour as billable

Sales calls, proposals, invoicing, bookkeeping and marketing are real work that no client pays for. Full-time freelancers typically bill 20–30 hours in a 40-hour week. If you enter 40 billable hours here, the resulting rate only works if you genuinely invoice all forty — and almost nobody does.

3. Forgetting the gaps

Projects end, clients pause, invoices land late. The buffer field exists so a two-week gap does not turn into a bad month. If your work is project-based rather than retainer-based, push the buffer toward 20%.

Hourly, day rate, or fixed price?

Use the hourly number as your floor, not your pitch. Day rates read better to clients and end the hour-counting conversation. For fixed-price work, estimate the hours honestly, add 30% for revisions, and multiply by the rate above — a fixed price that took twice as long is just a discount you never agreed to.

Frequently asked questions

What tax rate should I enter?

Your all-in effective rate, not your top bracket — income tax plus self-employment or social contributions. US sole proprietors commonly land near 25–32%; UK and EU freelancers often higher. If you are unsure, last year's tax paid divided by gross income is close enough.

Should expenses include my own pay?

No. Expenses are business costs only. Your pay is the take-home field.

My rate came out higher than the market. Now what?

That is information, not a verdict. Either the target income is above what this niche pays, the billable hours are unrealistically low, or the work needs repositioning. Dropping the number without changing anything else just means working the year at a loss.