Free calculator
Freelance rate calculator
Put in what you want to earn and how much you work. You get the rate that requires, and the hours underneath it.
How this calculator works
The sum is short:
rate = (what you want to earn + your fixed costs) ÷ the hours you actually bill
You usually know the first two numbers. The third is where it goes wrong, which is why it sits on its own line.
Why “how many hours do you work” is the wrong question
Forty hours a week sounds like forty billable hours. It never is. Time goes to proposals, to pitching, to your own admin, to a client who calls about something you will not be charging for.
Hitting 65% is good. People measuring it for the first time are usually surprised.
And the gap compounds. Drop from 65% to 55% and that is not 10% less revenue: you need almost 20% more rate to land in the same place. The calculator above works that out the moment you change anything.
What this number is and is not
It is a floor, not an asking price. It says what you need to get through the year on the assumptions you just typed in. It says nothing about what you are worth, what the market pays, or what to quote a client who is in a hurry.
What it does do is show how sensitive your rate is to something you probably are not tracking.
The same maths in any currency
Nothing here is dollar-specific. Put in euros, pounds or anything else and the answer comes out in the same currency, because every number in the sum is on the same side of the division.
Common questions
Should I include sales tax or VAT? No. Everything above is before tax. You add it on top of your rate and pass it on, so it never becomes your revenue.
How many working weeks should I put in? Start at 52 and take off four to five weeks of holiday, roughly a week of public holidays, and a buffer for sick days. That lands somewhere around 46. Put 52 in and you will price yourself short the first week you take off.
Does this work for an agency with staff? The sum still holds, but you run it per person and add employer costs to your fixed costs. With a team, billable share becomes the number you steer on, because it varies a lot by role.
Where do I find my own billable share? From your time tracking, if you keep it. If you do not, it is a guess, and that is mostly a reason to start. In FlowQi you see per project and per person how many hours are billable and how many are not.