Freelance Hourly Rate Calculator
Start from the income you want to take home, add what it costs to run your business, and see the rate that gets you there. Every number in the result is explained. Nothing leaves your browser.
Why most freelancers undercharge
The most common way to set a freelance rate is to take a salary, divide by 2,080 hours (52 weeks × 40 hours) and round up a bit. That number is always too low, because a freelancer does not bill 2,080 hours a year. Between holidays, sick days, proposals, invoicing, learning, marketing and the gaps between projects, most independent professionals bill somewhere between 50% and 70% of their working hours. The rest is real work that no client pays for directly.
This calculator starts from the hours you can actually invoice, then divides the money you need to earn by that smaller number. With the default inputs the result is roughly double the naive salary-divided-by-2,080 figure, and it is the honest floor for your rate.
The five inputs that matter
Target income is what you want to keep after business costs. If you enter a pre-tax figure, leave the tax field at zero. If you enter the amount you want to actually live on after income tax, put your effective tax rate in the tax field and the calculator grosses it up.
Expenses are everything the business pays for: software subscriptions, laptop depreciation, insurance, an accountant, co-working, training, and the employer-side taxes or social contributions that a salaried worker never sees. New freelancers routinely forget half of these, so list them before you guess.
Weeks off should include public holidays, vacation, likely sick days, and at least a week or two of dead time between contracts. Six weeks is a reasonable starting point; eight is safer.
Hours per week is your real working week, not your ideal one. Billable share is the fraction of those hours a client pays for. If you have never tracked your time, assume 60% and measure for a month.
From hourly rate to project pricing
An hourly rate is a floor, not a menu. Use it internally to check that a fixed-price quote covers your time with margin, and to price the inevitable extra hours. Many freelancers quote projects at 1.2 to 1.5 times the hourly estimate to cover scope creep and revisions, and use a day rate rather than an hourly rate on the proposal so clients focus on outcomes instead of minutes. Our deposit and milestone calculator helps structure the payments once you have the price.
Frequently asked questions
Should I include my own salary as an expense?
No. Your income goes in the first field; expenses are the costs of running the business other than paying yourself.
What billable percentage should I use?
Track a month of work. Most solo freelancers land between 50% and 70%. Agencies with a sales team can push a producer's billable share higher, but a one-person business rarely exceeds 75%.
Why is my rate so much higher than an employee's hourly wage?
Because you are also paying for the benefits, downtime, equipment and risk an employer would otherwise cover, and billing far fewer hours than you work. Our day rate to salary calculator shows the comparison the other way round.
Is my data stored?
No. The calculation runs entirely in your browser.