Freelance Hourly Rate Calculator
Most freelancers set a rate by copying someone else. This works backwards from the income you actually need to live on.
Result
$0.00
Where the money goes
Saving keeps your figures on this device only — nothing is sent anywhere.
Why "billable hours" is the field that decides everything
A working week is not a billable week. Finding clients, writing proposals, invoicing, chasing late payment, learning, and email are all real work that no client pays for. Freelancers who divide their target income by 40 hours × 52 weeks arrive at a rate that is roughly half of what they actually need, then spend a year wondering why they are busy and broke.
25 billable hours in a 40-hour week is a realistic, not pessimistic, default. If you are new and still marketing heavily, 15–20 is closer to the truth.
The formula
Pre-tax income needed = Take-home target ÷ (1 − tax rate)
Total to invoice = Pre-tax income + Business expenses
Minimum rate = Total to invoice ÷ (Billable hours × Weeks worked)
The tax step is the one people skip, and it is not a small correction. To take home $30,000 at a 20% effective rate you must earn $37,500 — an extra $7,500 that has to come from your rate, not from working more weekends.
Worked example
Using the defaults: $30,000 take-home target, 20% tax, $3,000 expenses, 25 hours × 46 weeks = 1,150 billable hours.
- Pre-tax needed: $30,000 ÷ 0.80 = $37,500
- Plus expenses: $40,500 to invoice
- $40,500 ÷ 1,150 hours = $35.22 per hour minimum
That is the floor, not the target. It contains no profit, no savings, no equipment replacement and no slow month. A sensible working rate sits meaningfully above it.
Use it to price fixed-fee projects too
The most common freelance mistake after underpricing is quoting a flat fee without knowing your hourly floor. Estimate the hours honestly, add 30% for revisions and scope creep, multiply by the rate above. If the client's budget cannot reach that figure, the project is not underpaying you by a little — it is asking you to fund it.
Questions
Should I really not use 40 hours a week?
Not for billable hours, no. Every hour spent on proposals, invoicing, admin and finding the next client is unpaid, and those hours are unavoidable. Billing 25 of 40 hours is normal; billing 35 of 40 sustainably is rare.
What tax rate should I enter?
Your own effective rate, including any self-employment or social contributions, which differs by country and by income level. If you genuinely do not know it yet, entering a deliberately cautious figure is safer than entering zero — a rate set too low is very hard to raise with existing clients.
My calculated rate looks too high for my market. What now?
That gap is useful information, not a reason to discount. It means either your target income needs more billable hours than you have, or the market segment you are in cannot fund the life you are planning. Both are solvable — by specialising into better-paying work, or by adjusting the target — but not by pretending the arithmetic is different.