Start from the income you want, add your costs, taxes and realistic billable hours, and get an hourly rate and project price that actually support your business.
Service pricing calculator
Built for freelancers, consultants, photographers, editors, coaches, cleaners, virtual assistants, designers and any other service business.
Your yearly goals
Your working time
A specific project
How to price a service
Pricing a service works backwards from your life, not forwards from an hour. Decide what you need to earn, add what the business costs to run, add tax, then add a cushion for savings. That total is the revenue your year has to produce.
Divide it by the hours you can genuinely invoice — not the hours you work — and you have the minimum you can charge without going backwards. Everything above that is profit, and profit is what lets you buy equipment, take holidays and survive a quiet quarter.
Billable versus non-billable time
A 40-hour week is almost never 40 billable hours. Quoting, invoicing, marketing, client calls, editing your portfolio, chasing payments and learning new tools are all real work that no one pays for directly.
Billable — the shoot, the session, the build, the clean, the edit, the coaching hour.
Non-billable — admin, sales, travel you don't charge for, software setup, bookkeeping.
If only 60% of your time is billable, your rate has to carry the other 40%. That is why the calculator asks for a percentage instead of assuming every hour earns money.
Hourly rates versus project pricing
An hourly rate is a tool for you; a project price is a message to the client. Hourly billing is transparent and fair for open-ended work, but it quietly penalises experience — the faster you get, the less you earn.
Project pricing fixes that. Estimate the hours honestly, apply your recommended rate, add the expenses that only this job creates, and quote one number. Ask for a deposit up front so your time is protected before the work starts.
A worked example
Say you want $60,000 of personal income, with $12,000 of business expenses, $15,000 of estimated tax and a $5,000 savings goal. That's $92,000 of revenue your year has to produce — about $7,667 a month.
Working 48 weeks at 40 hours gives 1,920 working hours, but at 60% billable only 1,152 of them can be invoiced. That's a minimum rate of about $79.86 an hour. Adding a 20% profit target brings the recommended rate to roughly $95.83.
A 20-hour project would be $1,916.67 of labour, plus $150 of project expenses — about $2,066.67 quoted, with a 50% deposit of roughly $1,033.33 before you begin. Load the sample numbers above to see it live.
Common service-pricing mistakes
Assuming every working hour is a billable hour.
Forgetting tax until it arrives as a bill.
Pricing from what a competitor charges instead of what your year costs.
Under-estimating project hours and absorbing revisions for free.
Leaving out project expenses like travel, prints, stock assets or subcontractors.
Starting work without a deposit.
Never raising rates, even as costs and skill both climb.
Frequently asked questions
What billable percentage should I use?
Most solo service providers land between 50% and 70%. Admin, marketing, quoting, email and bookkeeping all eat into the week, so anything above 80% is usually optimistic.
Should I quote hourly or by the project?
Work out the hourly rate privately, then quote a project price. Clients prefer a fixed number, and you're not punished for getting faster at your craft.
Do I include tax in my rate?
Yes. Self-employed tax comes out of what you invoice, so it belongs in the annual revenue you need before your rate is calculated.
What if my rate looks too high for my market?
Treat it as information, not a verdict. Either reduce your costs, raise your billable percentage, work more weeks, or move toward clients who value the outcome rather than the hour.
Is my data saved anywhere?
No. Every calculation runs in your browser. Nothing is stored, sent or shared.