Freelance Rate Calculator
100% PrivateBusiness & Finance UtilitiesWork backwards from the income you want to the hourly rate you need to charge.
Runs entirely in your browser. Your input is not uploaded to Ovatly or anywhere else.
Estimate only. It assumes the tax allowance applies to profit after business costs, and that every billable hour is actually sold. Charging exactly this rate leaves no buffer for gaps between projects.
- 1Enter the take-home income you want per year, after the tax allowance.
- 2Add annual business costs (software, equipment, insurance, accounting).
- 3Set the tax allowance percent you keep back from profit.
- 4Set worked hours per week, weeks off per year, the non-billable share of your time, and the hours in your day.
- 5Read the minimum hourly and day rates, labelled as estimates.
Working 30 hours a week for 48 weeks (4 weeks off) with 25 percent of time non-billable gives 1,080 billable hours a year. To keep 60,000 after a 20 percent tax allowance and cover 5,000 of costs you must bill 80,000, which is an hourly rate of 74.07, or 592.59 for an 8-hour day.
- Results are estimates, shown rounded half-up to 2 decimal places. The tax allowance is a flat percent of profit in this model; real tax depends on your country, structure and other income.
- The model assumes every billable hour is sold. It has no buffer for gaps between projects, late payers or slow months, so treat the result as a floor, not a target.
- Weeks off reduce billable hours across the whole year. Taking 4 weeks off at 30 hours a week removes 120 worked hours before the non-billable share is even applied.
Because the rate also has to cover your business costs and the tax allowance, and because only part of your week is billable. Admin, marketing and quoting time has to be paid for by the billable hours.
About this tool
The Freelance Rate Calculator works backwards from the take-home income you want to the hourly and day rate you need to charge, taking account of business costs, a tax allowance, weeks off and the share of your week that is not billable. Every assumption is a visible input you can change, because the honest answer depends entirely on them.
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Part of Ovatly's free tools in Business & Finance Utilities.