Enter what you want to earn and see what your time needs to be worth.
Built for freelancers, consultants, photographers, editors, coaches, cleaners, virtual assistants, designers and any other service business.
This calculator works backwards from the income you want to the hourly rate your week can actually deliver. It accounts for business expenses, tax and the fact that only part of your week is billable.
It is built for freelancers, consultants, coaches and other solo service providers deciding what to charge for their time.
The recommended hourly rate is the break-even-plus-income rate for the working year you described. Change one input at a time to see which lever moves it most.
A rate that feels high usually means too few billable hours, not that the goal is wrong. Raising billable time or working with fewer, larger clients lowers the rate you need.
A designer wants $70,000 of income, has $6,000 of expenses, estimates 25% tax, works 46 weeks at 35 hours with 60% billable. The calculator lands near $110 an hour, so a 20-hour job quotes around $2,200.
Illustrative example only — the numbers are fictional and not a recommendation.
Not every working hour is billable. Quoting, invoicing, email and marketing still have to be paid for by the hours you do bill.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Yes. Self-employed tax comes out of what you invoice, so it belongs in the annual revenue you need before your rate is calculated.
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.
No. Every calculation runs in your browser. Nothing is stored, sent or shared.