Freelance Rate Calculator

How to use this calculator

Most freelancers set a rate by looking at what other people charge and picking a number somewhere in the middle. That is guessing, and it is the single most common reason a freelance business that looks busy still cannot pay for a holiday. This calculator works backwards from the only figure that matters to you: what you need to keep.

Start with your target annual income — the money you actually want to live on, after tax and after the business has covered its own costs. Then set the share of revenue you intend to keep back for tax. That figure is yours to decide; it depends on where you live, your structure and your other income, so the presets here are common starting points rather than advice. If you do not know it, ask an accountant and come back with a real number.

Add your monthly business expenses honestly and inclusively: design or development software, accounting subscriptions, professional insurance, a share of your phone and internet bill, hardware you replace every three years, memberships, the coworking desk. Small recurring costs are the ones that quietly eat a rate.

Billable hours are the number that decides everything

The last two inputs matter more than the first three. Billable hours means hours a client is invoiced for — not hours spent writing proposals, chasing late payment, doing your books, posting on social media or learning a new tool. Across a full-time freelance week, most solo operators produce somewhere between 20 and 28 genuinely billable hours. If this is a side gig around a job, be realistic about what your evenings and weekends can sustain for months rather than for one enthusiastic fortnight.

Weeks worked per year should have holiday, public holidays, sick days and the quiet weeks between contracts taken out of it. Fifty-two is a fantasy. Forty-four to forty-eight is a working year.

What the output means — and what it does not

The headline number is a floor, not a price. It is the rate at which your billable hours, your expenses and your tax set-aside combine to leave exactly your target income and nothing more: no profit, no growth, no buffer for the month a client pays six weeks late. Charging below it means the target is unreachable at the hours you entered, however hard you work.

The stacked bar shows how the gross figure divides up. For most people the surprise is how much of the total is tax reserve and overhead rather than pay — which is exactly why a rate set by market gossip tends to fall short.

Use the floor as a starting point and add margin for profit and for the plain fact that clients rarely fill every hour you make available. If the rate looks uncomfortably high, the fix is usually not a lower rate. It is more billable hours, lower overhead, or a smaller income target. Change one input at a time and watch which one moves the headline most; that is where your attention belongs.