Hourly Freelance Rate
Free Hourly Freelance Rate calculator with clear step-by-step results.
About Hourly Freelance Rate
Works backwards from the income you want to live on. Tax is grossed up first, business costs are added, an allowance for unpaid invoices is layered on, and the result is divided by genuinely billable hours - which is typically half to two-thirds of the hours you actually work.
Formulas
Revenue required
Revenue = (take-home / (1 - tax rate) + business costs) / (1 - bad debt allowance)
Hourly rate
Rate = revenue required / (working weeks x billable hours per week)
Worked example
With the default values below, Hourly Freelance Rate returns Hourly rate to charge of $97.71. Change any input above and every figure here is recalculated in your browser.
Inputs used
- Target take-home incomeminimum 0 $
- 70,000 $
- Annual business costsminimum 0 $
- 9,000 $
- Working weeks per yearaccepts 1–52
- 46
- Billable hours per weekaccepts 1–80 h
- 25 h
- Effective tax and social contributionsaccepts 0–70 %
- 30 %
- Allowance for unpaid invoicesaccepts 0–20 %
- 3 %
Results
- Hourly rate to charge
- $97.71
- Equivalent day rate (7.5 hours)
- $732.86
- Billable hours per year
- 1,150 h
- Revenue you must invoice
- $112,371.13
Step by step
- 1Values used
- 2Revenue required
- 3Hourly rate
- 4Hourly rate to charge= $97.71/h
- 5Equivalent day rate (7.5 hours)= $732.86
- 6Billable hours per year= 1,150 h
- 7Revenue you must invoice= $112,371.13
Assumptions and limits
- The result is derived only from the 6 inputs listed above. Anything not among them is not part of the calculation.
- In particular, this calculator does not take inflation into account.
- Figures are rounded for display to 2 decimal places, so totals built from several rounded parts can differ slightly from the unrounded arithmetic.
How these calculators are built and tested is described on the Methodology page. If a figure looks wrong, please report it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why are billable hours so much lower than working hours?
Sales, admin, invoicing, learning and unpaid revisions all consume time. Twenty-five billable hours in a forty-hour week is a realistic mature freelance practice.
Should holidays and sick leave be in the working weeks?
No - subtract them. Forty-six working weeks already allows around six weeks off; going below that assumes you never take a break or fall ill.