Freelance Hourly Rate Calculator
Calculate the hourly rate you need based on your income goal, expenses, and billable time.
How is freelance rate calculator worked out?
Your required hourly rate is your target income plus business expenses, grossed up for tax, divided by the hours you can genuinely bill in a year — which is far fewer than the hours you work.
Freelance Rate Calculator
Required hourly rate
$82.13
- Equivalent day rate
- $657.00
- Based on an eight-hour billable day.
- Billable hours per year
- 1,150
- 46 working weeks × 25 billable hours.
Show the working
| Target take-home income | $60,000.00 |
| Business expenses | $8,000.00 |
| Tax and contributions at 28% | $26,444.44 |
| Revenue you must bill | $94,444.44 |
| Divided by billable hours | 1,150 |
| Required hourly rate | $82.13 |
Most freelancers who undercharge did the arithmetic against a salary and a 40-hour week. Neither survives contact with self-employment: a salary hides the employer's contribution to your costs, and a working week contains a great deal of time nobody will pay for. This calculator starts from what you need to end up with and works backwards through the things that erode it.
The formula
Billable hours = (working weeks − weeks off) × billable hours per week
Revenue needed before tax = (target take-home + business expenses) ÷ (1 − tax set-aside %)
Required hourly rate = revenue needed ÷ billable hoursThe tax set-aside is a gross-up, not a deduction: if you need to keep a given amount after tax, you must bill more than that amount, and dividing by one minus the rate is what produces the right figure. Use a realistic combined rate for income tax and any self-employment or social contributions where you live.
Why billable hours are the number that matters
The single biggest error in freelance pricing is dividing a target income by 2,080 hours. Nobody bills 2,080 hours. Time goes on finding work, quoting, invoicing and chasing it, admin, learning, and revisions that were not in scope — and every hour of that is funded by the hours you do bill. Twenty-five billable hours in a forty-hour week is a realistic starting assumption for solo work; if you have never measured yours, assume less rather than more.
What a rate has to cover that a salary does not
An employee's salary sits on top of costs the employer absorbs invisibly: payroll contributions, paid holiday, sick leave, pension, equipment, software, insurance and training. As a freelancer, all of it comes out of your rate, along with the unpaid weeks when work does not appear. That is why an hourly rate that merely matches a salaried hourly equivalent is a substantial pay cut, and why the honest comparison is total cost of employment against your annual revenue.
Treat the result as a floor
What this calculator gives you is the rate at which your business breaks even against the life you want — not what your work is worth. Value, scarcity, urgency and the client's alternatives all sit above that floor. Use the number to know when to say no, and price above it whenever the market lets you.
Frequently asked questions
How do I calculate my freelance hourly rate?
Add your target take-home income to your annual business expenses, then divide by one minus your tax set-aside to get the revenue you need to bill. Divide that by your realistic annual billable hours — working weeks multiplied by the hours per week a client actually pays for.
How many hours a year can a freelancer actually bill?
Considerably fewer than they work. After time off, and after the sales, admin, invoicing and unpaid revisions that fill any freelance week, 1,000 to 1,300 billable hours a year is a common range for solo work. Using 2,080 will underprice you by roughly half.
How much should I set aside for tax as a freelancer?
It depends entirely on where you live, what you earn and how you are structured, and it typically includes social or self-employment contributions as well as income tax. The set-aside field here is a placeholder for that combined figure — get the right number for your situation from a local accountant rather than from a rule of thumb.
Put the number on an invoice
The free invoice generator builds the document around your figures — line items, tax, payment terms — and downloads a print-ready PDF. No signup required.
Related calculators
- Billable Hours CalculatorEstimate annual, monthly, and weekly billable hours after time off and non-billable work.
- Hourly Invoice CalculatorTurn hours and hourly rates into an invoice total, with expenses, discounts, tax, and deposits.
- Retainer CalculatorSet a monthly retainer from expected hours and hourly rate, with optional discount and overage pricing.
Guides that go deeper
More create & price calculators, or browse all 26 invoice calculators.