Business Tools
Freelance Hourly Rate Calculator
Estimate a planning hourly rate from income target, costs and billable time.
✓ Free
✓ No account
◉ Runs on this device
Business Tools
Powering up the tool…
TOOL HOURLY-RATE-
What this tool does
About the freelance hourly rate calculator
The worksheet makes working weeks, weekly hours, utilisation and overhead editable. It reports the arithmetic clearly without prescribing what anyone must charge.
Method
- Billable Hours
weeks × hours per week × billable percentage- Required Revenue
income target + annual business costs + contingency- Rate
required revenue / billable hours
- All values cover one consistent annual period.
- Billable percentage accounts for non-client work.
- Taxes and benefits are included only if the user enters them.
How to use it
- Enter your target income, annual business costs and a contingency.
- Enter working weeks, hours per week and an honest billable percentage — 50–60% is common once admin, sales and email take their share.
- Read the planning rate: required revenue divided by true billable hours.
- Adjust the assumptions and watch what each one costs you.
Useful for
- Set a freelance rate grounded in your real income target instead of copying someone else’s.
- See what going independent actually requires per hour once holidays and admin time are honest.
- Justify a rate rise with arithmetic when a client pushes back.
Straight answers
Freelance Hourly Rate Calculator FAQ
Why is the rate so much higher than my old salary divided by hours?
Because employment hid the costs: holidays, sick days, equipment, insurance, pension, and the unbillable half of every week. The worksheet makes each visible instead of letting you underprice by accident.
Is this what I should charge?
It is the floor that meets your target under your assumptions — a planning number. What the market bears, and the value of the work, can move the real figure well above it.