Freelance Rate Calculator — The Hourly Rate You Actually Need
Work backwards from your income goal: taxes, expenses, vacation and non-billable hours to the hourly and day rate you must charge.
Last reviewed 2026-10-01. Rates change — verify against the official sources linked below before relying on these figures.
What this is based on
- Taxes modeled as a single flat percentage of gross — combine your income tax and self-employment/social contribution rates.
- Billable share accounts for unpaid work: sales, invoicing, admin, marketing.
- Weeks off include vacation, sick days and slow periods between contracts.
Why your salary-based rate is wrong
The classic mistake: take your old salary, divide by 2,080, and call that your freelance rate. A $60k salary becomes $29/hour — but that math silently assumes someone else pays your taxes' employer half, your benefits, your equipment, and 100% of your hours are billable. None of that is true freelancing.
The real formula runs backwards: take-home goal → gross up for taxes → add business expenses → divide by the hours you can actually bill. A $60k take-home at 30% tax with $6k of expenses needs ~$92k of revenue — and at 1,344 billable hours that's $68/hour, not $29.
The billable-hours trap
New freelancers assume 40 billable hours a week. Reality: sales calls, proposals, invoicing, bookkeeping, learning and marketing easily eat 25–40% of a solo freelancer's time. If you plan for 100% utilization you'll land at 60–70% and wonder where the money went.
Weeks off matter just as much. Employees get paid vacation; freelancers get unpaid silence. Four weeks off removes ~8% of your annual capacity — price it in, or you're funding your own vacation pay cut.
Hourly is the floor, not the product
Use this number as the minimum below which you lose money on every hour — then stop selling hours. Value-priced projects and retainers decouple income from your calendar. The hourly rate tells you what a project must effectively pay per hour to be worth taking; it should be invisible to the client.
Frequently asked questions
- How do I calculate my freelance hourly rate?
- Required revenue = (target take-home ÷ (1 − tax rate)) + annual expenses. Hourly rate = required revenue ÷ annual billable hours. The calculator runs this for you.
- What percentage of my hours are actually billable?
- Most solo freelancers bill 60–75% of working time. The rest goes to sales, admin, invoicing and marketing. Track a month honestly before trusting a higher number.
- Should I charge hourly or per project?
- Know your hourly floor, then quote per project. Hourly billing punishes efficiency — the faster you get, the less you earn. Project pricing rewards it.
- How do taxes work for freelancers?
- You pay both income tax and self-employment/social contributions — typically 25–40% combined depending on country and bracket. Budget it as a flat percentage and set it aside on every invoice.
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