Work out exactly what to charge per hour based on your income goal, expenses, and real billable time.
One of the hardest questions for any new freelancer is deciding what to actually charge. Guess too low and you end up working long hours for less than minimum wage once expenses and unpaid admin time are factored in. Guess too high without any basis and you risk pricing yourself out of the market with nothing to back the number up. This calculator solves that by working backward from the income you actually want to take home, rather than picking a rate that sounds reasonable and hoping it adds up.
The calculation accounts for the parts of freelancing that salaried employees never have to think about: paid vacation does not exist unless you build it into your rate, and a large share of your working week goes to unpaid tasks like client communication, invoicing, proposals, and marketing rather than billable work. The billable percentage slider lets you reflect this honestly, since very few freelancers are able to bill 100% of the hours they work, and pricing as if you could is one of the most common reasons freelancers end up earning far less than they expected.
Business expenses matter just as much as income. Unlike a salaried job where the employer absorbs the cost of software, hardware, taxes, and other overhead, a freelancer has to build all of that into their rate or it comes directly out of take-home income. Adding your annual expenses to your income goal before dividing by billable hours ensures your rate actually covers the true cost of running your freelance business, not just your personal earnings target.
Use this calculator whenever you are setting your rate for the first time, revisiting it after your expenses or workload have changed, or preparing a rate justification for a client who asks how you arrived at your number. Adjust the working weeks, hours, and billable percentage to match your real schedule for the most accurate result.