Freelance Hourly Rate Calculator

What is a freelance hourly rate calculator?

A freelance hourly rate calculator works out the minimum rate you need to charge to hit a target income, after covering business expenses, taxes, and — critically — the hours you can’t bill. It turns “how much do I want to earn?” into a number you can put on a proposal.

How this calculator works

• Enter your target take-home income, annual business expenses, and tax rate.
• Enter your total working hours and what percentage is actually billable.
• It grosses up the target for tax, adds expenses, and divides by billable hours.
• The result is the hourly rate that covers all three — income, overhead, and tax.

How to use the result

1. Treat the number as a floor, not a ceiling — charge at least this, and more when your experience justifies it.
2. Be honest about the billable percentage. If you spend a quarter of your week on admin and pitching, that’s time you must price in.
3. Add a buffer for slow months — billable hours are rarely consistent, so a rate that only works at 100% utilisation will leave you short.
4. Re-run the number when your expenses or tax situation change, and when you raise your target income.

How much should freelancers charge per hour?

It depends on your costs and market, but the method matters more than the number: add your target income to expenses, gross up for tax, and divide by realistic billable hours. For a $70,000 target with $6,000 in expenses, 25% tax, and 70% billable time, that’s roughly $70 an hour — comfortably above the salary-to-hourly equivalent of a $70k job, which is why freelancers must charge more per hour than employees earn.

Common mistakes

• Basing the rate on an employee salary. You pay both sides of tax, buy your own equipment, and take unpaid holidays — the equivalent hourly rate is higher.
• Assuming 100% billable time. Admin, quoting, and marketing eat a third of many freelancers’ weeks.
• Forgetting expenses. Software, insurance, and workspace costs come out of the same gross revenue.

Once you have your rate, the invoice generator turns billable hours into a client-ready invoice, and the salary to hourly converter shows what the salaried equivalent would be for comparison.