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Freelance Rate Calculator

Reverse-engineer the rate you need to charge from a target take-home salary, your real overhead, and the billable hours you actually work — not the 40-hour week you wish you did.

Hourly, daily, and project rates Accounts for taxes and overhead Uses real billable hours, not 40/week

Target take-home income / year

After tax, what you actually want in your pocket.

Currency

Effective tax rate

Income tax + 15.3% self-employment if US-based.

Annual overhead

Insurance, software, equipment, coworking, accounting.

Billable hours / week

Most full-time freelancers bill 20–25 of a 40-hour week.

Working weeks / year

52 minus vacation, holidays, and sick days.

Cost breakdown

Take-home income: $80,000
Taxes (25%): $26,667
Annual overhead: $12,000
Total revenue you must invoice: $118,667
Annual billable hours: 1,200 h

Your rate

Hourly rate

$99 / hr

Day rate (8 hr)

$791

Monthly target

$9,889 / 100 h

Project equivalents

1 week (40 h)$3,956
2 weeks (80 h)$7,911
1 month (160 h)$15,822

Summary:

My freelance rate: $99/hr ($791/day) — based on $80,000 take-home, 25% tax, $12,000 overhead, and 1,200 billable hours/year.

Rates vary by skill, region, and client type — this calculator is guidance, not financial advice. Always pressure-test your number against what comparable freelancers in your niche actually charge.

What this calculator gives you in 30 seconds

Most new freelancers pick a rate by dividing their old salary by 2,080 hours. That number is almost always too low. This tool builds a defensible rate from your real income goal, the costs your old employer used to cover, and the hours you can actually bill.

20–25 hr

Realistic billable week

Most full-time freelancers bill 20–25 hours of a 40-hour week. The rest goes to pitching, scoping, admin, invoicing, and learning.

1.4–1.7×

Self-employment uplift

Once you add self-employment tax, health insurance, paid time off, and software, you typically need 1.4–1.7× your old salary just to break even.

3 outputs

Hourly, daily, project

See your hourly rate alongside an 8-hour day rate and 1-week, 2-week, and 1-month project equivalents you can drop straight into a proposal.

Why salary ÷ 2,080 is the wrong way to set a freelance rate

If you've ever Googled "how much should I charge as a freelancer", you've seen the bad advice: take your old salary, divide by 2,080, add 30%. It quietly underprices most people by half. Here's what that math misses.

You don't bill 40 hours a week. Pitching new clients, writing proposals, doing admin, sending invoices, chasing late payments, and learning new tools all eat real hours. Industry surveys peg billable utilization at 50–65% for solo freelancers.
Self-employment tax is real. In the US, freelancers pay an extra 15.3% in self-employment tax on top of regular income tax — money your old employer used to split with you. Forgetting it shows up as a tax bill you can't pay.
Benefits aren't free anymore. Health insurance, retirement contributions, paid time off, and equipment used to come out of your employer's budget. Now they come out of your hourly rate.
Vacation and sick days still happen. If you bill 50 weeks a year and then take two weeks off, your effective rate drops 4%. The calculator lets you set working weeks honestly so the math reflects the year you'll actually live.

Everything this freelance pricing calculator handles

Built to mirror the way working freelancers and consultants actually think about pricing — not a salary-to-hourly converter.

Target take-home, not gross

Enter what you want to keep after tax. The tool grosses up your revenue need automatically using your effective tax rate, so you stop accidentally pricing in pre-tax dollars.

Real overhead line

One field for everything your business actually costs you — software subscriptions, equipment, insurance, accounting, coworking. The result spreads it across your billable hours.

Honest billable hours

Set the hours you can realistically invoice each week and the weeks you'll actually work. Defaults to 25 hours × 48 weeks (1,200 hours), which most accountants treat as the realistic ceiling for a solo full-timer.

Project rate equivalents

Once you have an hourly rate, the panel shows what a 40-, 80-, and 160-hour project should land at. Use those as starting points for fixed-price proposals.

How to calculate your freelance rate

Three inputs, one number you can defend in a sales call.

Step 1
Set your target take-home and tax rate
Pick the number you want in your bank account at the end of the year. Add an effective tax rate that includes income tax plus 15.3% self-employment tax if you're US-based — 25–35% is a common starting range.
Step 2
Add overhead and real working hours
Total up annual software, insurance, equipment, and other business costs. Then set how many hours you can actually bill in a week (most full-timers cap out at 20–25) and how many weeks you'll work after vacation.
Step 3
Read your hourly, daily, and project rate
The result panel shows the hourly rate that hits your goal, an 8-hour day rate, and project equivalents at 40, 80, and 160 hours. Copy the one-line summary and use it as your floor in your next pricing conversation.

Why a freelance rate calculator matters more than you think

A good freelance rate calculator does one thing well: it stops you from quoting a number that quietly bankrupts you six months in. Most new freelancers and consultants set their rate by taking their old salary, dividing it by 2,080, maybe adding 20%, and calling it done. That math ignores self-employment tax, health insurance, vacation, sick days, equipment, software, and the simple reality that you can't bill 40 hours a week when you're also doing your own sales, admin, and bookkeeping.

The number this tool produces isn't a ceiling — it's a floor. It's the rate below which you'd be better off going back to a W-2 job, because anything lower means you're subsidizing your clients with your own savings.

How to figure out what to charge: the actual formula

The math is unglamorous but works:

Start with the take-home income you want for the year.
Divide by (1 − your effective tax rate) to get the gross revenue you need.
Add your annual overhead — software, insurance, equipment, coworking, accounting.
Divide that total by the hours you can realistically invoice across the year.

If you want $80,000 in your pocket, pay an effective 25% tax, run $12,000 of overhead, and can bill 25 hours a week for 48 weeks, the math comes out to roughly $89/hour. Not $40. Not $50. The gap between the naive calculation and the real one is exactly why so many freelancers burn out in their second year.

What "billable hours" actually means

This is the input most people get wrong. A 40-hour work week sounds like 40 billable hours, but in practice your week looks more like:

4–6 hours pitching new clients and writing proposals
2–4 hours on admin, invoicing, and follow-ups on overdue invoices
2–3 hours on professional development, reading, or skill maintenance
3–5 hours on internal work — your website, marketing, accounting

That leaves 22–29 hours for actual paid work, and that's on a good week with a full pipeline. Industry surveys consistently put solo-freelancer utilization at 50–65%. The calculator defaults to 25 billable hours a week for that reason. If you can honestly hit more, raise it; if you're part-time or just starting out, drop it.

Overhead: the silent rate-killer

When you were employed, your employer absorbed costs you probably never noticed. Now they're yours. A realistic overhead line for a full-time creative or technical freelancer in 2026 looks something like:

Software and tools: $1,500–$4,000/year
Health insurance (US, single): $5,000–$10,000/year
Equipment refresh (laptop, monitor, accessories amortized): $1,000–$2,000/year
Coworking or home office allocation: $0–$3,000/year
Accounting and legal: $500–$2,000/year
Professional development and conferences: $500–$2,000/year

That's $8,500–$23,000 a year for a typical solo operator. The calculator defaults to $12,000, which is mid-range for a US-based freelancer carrying their own health coverage. Adjust to your actual numbers — pulling them from last year's bank statement is a one-hour exercise that will sharpen your rate by 10–20%.

Hourly, daily, project: which one should you quote?

The output panel shows all three for a reason. Different clients respond to different framings:

Hourly is the most transparent and easiest to defend. Best for ongoing work, retainers, and scope-uncertain projects.
Daily is common in consulting, design sprints, and agency subcontracting. It anchors clients to a meaningful chunk of work, not a unit of time.
Project-based is what most experienced freelancers quote. The hourly rate is your internal benchmark; the project number is what the client sees. Pricing this way decouples your income from time spent and rewards efficiency.

A good rule: never share your hourly rate with a project client unless asked directly. They'll mentally multiply by 40 and forget you also do the work of an entire back office.

When to raise your rate

If the calculator says $90/hour and you're charging $60, you have three options: raise rates on existing clients with notice, replace clients one at a time at the higher rate, or accept that you're working for less than minimum wage once benefits and admin are factored in. Most freelancers underprice for the first 12–24 months because they're afraid of losing work. The clients you lose by raising rates by 20% are almost always the clients who were quietly costing you the most anyway.

Run the calculator quarterly. Your overhead changes, your tax bracket changes, your billable capacity changes. Your rate should change with them.

Frequently asked questions

How do I calculate my hourly rate as a freelancer?

Add the take-home income you want, gross it up for taxes (divide by 1 minus your tax rate), and add your annual overhead. Then divide by the number of hours you can actually bill in a year — typically 1,000 to 1,500, not 2,080. The calculator above runs this formula for you and shows daily and project equivalents.

How many hours a year does a full-time freelancer actually bill?

Most full-time solo freelancers bill 1,000 to 1,500 hours a year, which works out to 20–30 billable hours a week across 48–50 working weeks. The rest of the time goes to sales, admin, and unpaid project work like scoping and revisions. Anyone telling you to plan for 2,080 is selling something.

What tax rate should I use in the calculator?

If you're US-based, add your federal income tax bracket plus 15.3% self-employment tax, then add state tax. For most freelancers earning $60–120k, that lands between 25% and 35%. UK, Canadian, and EU freelancers should plug in their effective rate including national insurance or equivalents. Your accountant's number beats any default.

Should I charge more than my old salary divided by 2,080?

Yes, by a lot. As an employee, your employer covered roughly half your payroll tax, your health insurance, paid vacation, sick days, retirement match, equipment, and software. Replacing all of that yourself usually means charging 1.4–1.7× the simple salary-to-hourly conversion just to break even on lifestyle.

What's a normal freelance hourly rate in 2026?

It depends entirely on discipline and market. Common 2026 ranges: copywriters $40–120/hr, graphic designers $35–100/hr, web developers $50–150/hr, senior consultants and specialists $150–300/hr+. Use the calculator to find your floor, then check sites like Upwork, Contra, or your discipline's Discord for ceiling data in your niche.

Is it better to charge hourly or per project?

Hourly is easier to start with and protects you on scope creep. Project-based pricing usually pays better once you can scope accurately, because clients pay for the outcome, not your time. Most experienced freelancers quote project rates derived from an internal hourly rate — exactly what this tool produces.

How do I include overhead in my freelance rate?

Add up everything your business pays for in a year: software (Adobe, Figma, accounting tools), insurance (health, liability, equipment), hardware refresh, coworking or home office, professional development, and accountant fees. Drop the total into the overhead field — it gets baked evenly into your hourly rate.

Can I use this calculator if I'm part-time or doing freelance on the side?

Yes. Set billable hours per week to whatever you actually have available — 5, 10, 15 — and adjust working weeks accordingly. The math is identical; just be aware that side-hustle rates often need to be higher per hour because your fixed overhead doesn't scale down.

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