Freelance Hourly Rate Calculator
The hourly rate to charge as a freelancer to take home the income you want.
Good to know. A freelancer’s hour pays for the hours nobody pays for: invoicing, pitching and chasing late payments.
How it works
In plain words
Gross up the income you want for tax, add your business costs, and divide by the hours you can bill in a year: billable hours a week times working weeks.
The formula
revenue = income ÷ (1 − tax rate) + costs billable hours = hours per week × (52 − weeks off) hourly rate = revenue ÷ billable hours
Worked example
To take home 60,000 at 30% tax you need 85,714 of profit, plus 6,000 of costs: 91,714 a year. Billing 25 hours a week for 46 weeks is 1,150 hours, so charge 79.75 an hour.
Sources
No outside data or rates: this is plain arithmetic.
4 automated tests check its answers on every change.
About the freelance hourly rate calculator
The most common freelance mistake is dividing the salary you want by 2,080, the hours in a full-time year. As a freelancer you pay your own tax and costs, you don’t get paid holidays or sick days, and a good share of every week goes to work nobody pays for: finding clients, admin, invoicing and learning.
This calculator starts from the income you want to take home. It adds the tax on your profit and the costs a company would otherwise cover, then spreads the total over the hours you can realistically bill. 25 billable hours a week and six weeks off is a sensible starting point; many experienced freelancers bill fewer.
The result is a floor, not a price. Check it against what clients pay for similar work, and charge more for specialist skills, urgent jobs and small projects with high overheads. Day and project rates often work better than hourly ones: they reward you for being fast instead of penalising it.
The last line shows what an employee earning the same take-home would get per hour of a 40-hour, 52-week year. The gap between the two is why freelance rates look high to people on a payroll.
Questions people ask
How do I work out my freelance hourly rate?
Add the tax on the income you want and your business costs, then divide by the hours you can bill in a year, usually 1,000 to 1,400.
How many hours a week can a freelancer bill?
Usually 20 to 30 of a 40-hour week. The rest goes to finding work, admin and invoicing.
How do I turn a salary into a freelance rate?
A rough rule is to divide the salary by 1,000: a 60,000 salary suggests about 60 an hour, before business costs. The calculator gives a more precise figure.