Freelance Hourly Rate Calculator

The calculator spreads your income target over the hours clients will pay for:

• Billable hours a year: billable hours per week × working weeks
• Hourly rate: desired annual income ÷ billable hours
• Day rate: hourly rate × 8

With the defaults, $80,000 over 25 billable hours a week for 48 weeks is 1,200 hours, so you need $66.67 an hour, or $533.33 for an eight-hour day.

Compare that with dividing $80,000 by a full-time 2,080 hours (40 hours × 52 weeks), which gives $38.46. That figure assumes every working hour is paid and you never take a week off, which is not how freelancing works.

The calculator divides exactly the number you give it. It doesn't add business expenses, taxes or the benefits an employer would otherwise provide, so build them into the target yourself.

Say you want $80,000 for yourself and your business costs come to $14,000 a year: software, equipment, insurance, accounting, a co-working desk. Enter $94,000, and the rate rises to $78.33 an hour, a $626.67 day rate.

Do the same for anything you would have to fund yourself as a freelancer, such as retirement savings, health cover or self-employment taxes. The rates and rules depend on where you live, so check them with your tax authority or an accountant and add the yearly amounts to the target.

Billable hours are the time a client pays for. Writing proposals, invoicing, learning and finding the next client take real hours but earn nothing directly. Keeping the $80,000 target and 48 weeks:

Working weeks matter too. Holidays, public holidays, sick days and quiet periods between projects all come out of the year. Dropping from 48 to 44 working weeks at 25 hours a week raises the rate to $72.73.

Track your actual billable hours for a few months and use those figures. A rate based on 30 hours you never manage to bill leaves you short of your target.

The day rate line assumes eight billable hours in a client day. If a day of client work also includes travel or meetings you can't charge for, quote the day rate for the hours you'll actually bill, or charge for the full day explicitly.

For a fixed-price project, estimate the hours, add a buffer for revisions and surprises, and multiply by your rate. A job you expect to take 30 hours, with a 15% buffer, is 34.5 hours. At the default $66.67 rate that is a quote of about $2,300. If the project overruns, the buffer is what protects your effective hourly rate.