Freelance Hourly Rate Calculator

First the gross revenue you need is your target income plus expenses, divided by one minus your tax rate. Then your yearly billable hours are billable hours per week times working weeks, reduced by the non-billable percent. The rate is that gross divided by those hours, rounded to the cent.

Only the hours you can put on an invoice. Client meetings you charge for count, but marketing, bookkeeping, proposals and email usually do not. Most full-time freelancers bill 25 to 32 hours in a nominal 40-hour week, so set this well below your total working hours.

You can model the same thing two ways. Either drop your billable hours per week directly, or keep the higher number and apply a non-billable percent that trims it. The percent is handy when you think in terms of 'about 20 percent of my time is unpaid overhead' rather than exact hours.

Your target income is what you want to keep. Expenses like software and equipment come out before that, and tax takes a slice of gross earnings, so the rate has to be high enough that after paying both you still land on your target. Skipping this is the classic reason freelancers feel busy but broke.

Use your effective rate, meaning total tax divided by gross income, not your top marginal bracket. Include self-employment or payroll taxes where they apply. If you are unsure, a conservative estimate is safer than zero, and the field accepts anything from 0 up to but not including 100.

Yes, as a costing baseline. Estimate the hours a project will take, multiply by this rate to get a floor price, then add margin for scope creep and revisions. Fixed bids reward efficiency, so a strong hourly floor protects you if the work runs long.

Income and expenses can be zero or more, but billable hours and weeks must be greater than zero, and tax and non-billable percents must be below 100. If an entry is out of range the result simply does not appear until you fix it, and a hint reminds you the percents must stay under 100.

Yes. Every number is processed locally in your browser with plain arithmetic. Nothing you type is sent to a server, logged or stored, so your income goals and costs stay on your device.

Treat it as a floor, not a ceiling. It ignores what clients in your market will pay, the value you deliver and the premium expertise commands. Price above this number when demand allows; just avoid quoting below it, because that quietly eats into your target income.