Freelance Rate Calculator
Calculate the minimum hourly rate you need to charge as a freelancer to hit your income goal.
About the Freelance Rate Calculator
Freelancers rarely bill 40 hours a week — time goes to admin, marketing, and unpaid gaps between projects — so a rate that looks reasonable per hour can fall far short of a target income once you account for realistic billable hours. This calculator finds the minimum hourly rate needed to hit your income goal after expenses.
How It Works
The calculator adds your desired take-home income to your annual business expenses to find the total revenue you need to generate, then divides that by your realistic total billable hours for the year — billable hours per week multiplied by the number of weeks you actually work.
Minimum Hourly Rate = (Desired Income + Business Expenses) / (Billable Hours per Week × Weeks per Year).
Example
Scenario: A $80,000 income goal, $6,000 in expenses, billing 25 hours a week across 48 working weeks.
Result: Total billable hours of 1,200 per year, requiring a minimum hourly rate of about $71.67 to hit the goal.
Assumptions & Limitations
- Assumes billable hours are the only hours generating revenue — unpaid admin, marketing, and sales time is excluded from the denominator on purpose.
- Business expenses are assumed to be paid out of billed revenue rather than a separate source.
- Does not account for self-employment taxes, retirement contributions, or health insurance, which many freelancers need to budget for separately on top of this rate.
- Assumes consistent billable hours every week, which real freelance work rarely delivers exactly.