Freelance Rate Calculator

What this tool does

CM8-14 answers the question every independent worker eventually faces: what must I charge to actually make a living? Enter the income you want to take home, the time you can realistically sell, the cost of running your business, and the tax and contribution rates that apply where you live. The tool works backwards to the gross revenue you need, then divides it by the hours you can genuinely bill to give an hourly rate, a day rate, a week rate and a monthly retainer equivalent.

It assumes nothing about your country, currency or industry: working days, public holidays, sick allowance, tax and social-contribution rates are all yours to enter, in any of forty-plus currencies and four date formats. Everything runs inside this single HTML file — no installation, no account, no network requests, and your income figures never leave your computer.

Why an hourly rate is not a salary divided by 2080

The most common freelance pricing mistake is arithmetic: take the salary you used to earn, divide by 2,080 hours (52 weeks × 40 hours), and quote that. It fails for four compounding reasons.

• You do not work 2,080 hours. Subtract vacation, public holidays and sick days — most freelancers land nearer 1,700–1,800.
• You cannot bill all the hours you work. Proposals, invoicing, bookkeeping, marketing, calls that go nowhere and skills development are real work nobody pays for directly. This is utilisation, and it is usually the biggest correction of the four.
• An employer paid for things you now buy. Laptop, software, insurance, workspace, accounting, training, pension, the employer's half of social contributions — all of it once sat invisibly behind your salary.
• Nobody covers your gaps. No paid leave, no sick pay, no notice period, and clients who pay late or not at all.

Run honestly, the calculation usually lands between two and three times the naive salary-divided-by-2080 figure. That is not greed; it is the true cost of the same work delivered independently.

Utilisation, explained properly

Utilisation is the share of your working hours a client is willing to pay for. It is the number freelancers fool themselves about most, which is why this tool shows billable hours in large type right next to the rate.

Realistic bands, in the experience of most independents:

• Utilisation — Typical situation
• 85–95 % — Agency subcontracting or a long placement. Rare, and usually rate-suppressed.
• 65–80 % — Established practice, repeat clients, retainers, minimal pitching.
• 50–65 % — Most working solo freelancers with a healthy pipeline.
• 30–50 % — Early years, heavy marketing, long sales cycles, speculative work.

The rate-versus-utilisation chart shows why this matters more than any other input: the curve is a hyperbola, so every point you lose costs progressively more. Track your real billable hours for one quarter and use the measured figure.

The costs freelancers forget

Software and a laptop are the obvious ones. The list below is where the missing money usually hides — add whatever applies to your trade, in annual terms:

• Equipment amortised, not expensed. A laptop, camera or tool set replaced every three years is one third of its price every year, plus repairs.
• Insurance — indemnity, liability, equipment, and in many countries the health or income-protection cover you no longer get from an employer.
• Accounting, legal and company filing fees.
• Workspace — desk rental, or the heating, power and space cost of working at home.
• Payment and banking fees, which are a percentage rather than a fixed sum: card processing, platform commissions, currency conversion, cross-border transfers. Enter these as a percentage of revenue so they scale with your billings.
• Bad debt. Some invoices are paid late; a few never. A 2–3 % allowance is prudent.
• Training, certification, books and conferences — staying employable.
• Marketing — website, portfolio, hosting, domain renewals, advertising, samples.
• Subcontractors for overflow, and commission paid to intermediaries.

Enter each item as an annual amount or as a percentage of revenue; the cost breakdown table converts everything to a yearly figure and a share of revenue, so you can see what is material and what is noise.

Tax, contributions and pension

Three user-entered percentages apply to your pre-tax business profit: effective income tax, social or self-employment contributions, and a pension set-aside. Enter your effective rate — the average proportion you actually pay across the year — not the top marginal band.

Two deliberate modelling choices. Sales taxes such as VAT or GST are generally collected on top of your fee and passed on, so they are excluded here — if your regime differs, add the net effect as a percentage-of-revenue cost. And the pension set-aside is deducted before take-home, so the target you enter is genuinely spendable income with retirement saving already funded.

Raising your rate

The reality checks exist because discounting feels smaller than it is. Costs and taxes do not fall when your price does, so a 10 % discount typically removes a far larger share of your take-home — often twenty to forty per cent of it. The tool computes the exact figure for your numbers, plus the extra hours you would have to work to stand still. When negotiating:

• Treat the calculated rate as your floor, not your opening ask.
• If a client cannot meet it, reduce scope instead of price. Discounting trains buyers to expect it.
• Raise rates with new clients first, then existing ones at a natural boundary — a renewal, a new project, the start of a year — with reasonable notice.
• Recalculate annually. A rate held flat for three years is a real-terms pay cut.

Day rates, week rates and value pricing

Day and week rates here are your hourly rate multiplied by the hours in a working day and the days in a working week. That is the right basis when a booked day is fully dedicated to one client, which is exactly what a day rate sells. If you routinely book half-days, or lose part of each booked day to travel, reduce your hours-per-day input rather than discounting the rate.

The monthly retainer figure is the revenue you would need each month if one ongoing engagement had to fund your whole year. Retainers often justify a modest discount because they raise utilisation and remove sales effort — check that trade in the scenario table first.

None of this prevents value-based pricing; a fixed price built on worth to the client can sit far above the cost-derived floor, and should. Use the project helper to sanity-check it: enter estimated hours and a risk buffer, and you get the price, the buffered hours and the break-even hours — the point at which the project stops paying your required rate. Above the cost-based number you have margin; below it, you are subsidising the client.

Saving your work

• Autosave: inputs, cost list, scenarios and report header are kept in this browser's local storage and restored next time you open the file.
• Save: writes everything immediately and flashes “Saved ✓” with the time. Nothing is stored outside your own browser.
• Export .json / Import .json: the complete state as a file to archive or move.
• CSV exports: the cost list and the rate-scenario table, ready for a spreadsheet.
• Print Report: executive tiles, the rate build-up, all three charts, the cost breakdown, the scenario table and your closing notes, rebuilt from current data every time — including when you print with Ctrl+P.
• Reset: two-step — press once to arm, again to confirm. It erases the inputs, cost list, scenarios, report header and everything saved in your browser. Export first if you want a copy.

Disclaimer

This tool performs arithmetic on the figures you supply. It is not tax, accounting, legal or financial advice and it is not a substitute for a qualified professional who knows the rules where you live and work. Tax rates, contribution rules, pension obligations, allowable expenses and sales-tax treatment vary by country and change over time; the pre-filled values are generic placeholders chosen to be obviously editable, not recommendations. Verify every rate locally, and treat the output as one input to a pricing decision rather than the decision itself.