Freelance Hourly Rate Calculator
Start from the take-home pay you want and work backward to the hourly rate you actually need to charge — taxes, expenses, and unbillable hours included.
Software, gear, insurance — costs you cover before profit.
Find the hourly rate you actually need to charge
This free freelance rate calculator works backward from the income you want to the hourly rate you have to charge to get there. Most freelancers set a rate by guessing, copying a competitor, or shaving a bit off their old salary — and quietly underearn for years. This tool replaces the guess with arithmetic you can see.
Enter the take-home pay you want, your annual business expenses, how many weeks a year you work, and how many of those hours are actually billable. The calculator grosses everything up for self-employment and income tax and divides by your real billable capacity to produce a defensible hourly rate, day rate, and required annual revenue. It's built for consultants, designers, developers, writers, coaches, and any independent professional setting or raising a rate.
Why your rate isn't your old salary divided by 2,080
A salaried employee is paid for 2,080 hours a year. A freelancer is not. You spend a large share of every week on sales calls, admin, invoicing, scope creep, and unpaid revisions — none of it billable. Dividing a target salary by 2,080 hours produces a rate that only works if every hour magically bills, which never happens.
On top of that, freelancers pay self-employment tax and fund their own expenses, software, and equipment. A rate that ignores tax and overhead is a rate that loses money. This calculator builds both into the result.
How the freelance rate calculation works
Start from the take-home pay you genuinely want. The tool grosses that figure up for income and self-employment tax, adds your annual business expenses, and arrives at the total revenue you must bill across the year.
It then divides that revenue by your real billable hours — weeks worked multiplied by billable hours per week — to give the hourly rate. Because it uses billable hours rather than all 40, the result reflects what you can actually invoice.
Use the result as a floor, then price on value
The number this calculator returns is a cost-based minimum: the rate below which you're working at a loss against your own goal. Strong freelancers price on the value they deliver to a client, not just the hours a task takes — so treat this figure as the line you never drop under, then charge more wherever the work justifies it. Project-based pricing usually earns more than hourly billing, but you still need this hourly floor to judge whether a fixed price is worth accepting.
Frequently asked questions
How do I calculate my freelance hourly rate?+
Add the take-home pay you want, the income and self-employment tax on it, and your annual business expenses to get your required revenue. Divide that by your billable hours for the year. This calculator does all of it instantly.
How many hours a week can a freelancer actually bill?+
Most full-time freelancers bill 20–30 hours of a 40-hour week. The rest goes to finding clients, admin, and unpaid work. The calculator defaults to 25 — adjust it to your reality.
What effective tax rate should I use?+
For many freelancers a combined federal income tax, self-employment tax, and state tax burden lands around 25–32% of net profit. Run the free self-employment tax calculator for a figure specific to your income and state.
Should I charge hourly or per project?+
Project pricing usually earns more because it's tied to value rather than time. But you still need an hourly floor to know whether a fixed price is worth it — that's what this tool gives you.
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