What you actuallyneed to charge.
Most freelancers price by guessing what sounds reasonable, and quietly underearn for years. This works the other way: start from the income you want to keep, add your real costs, tax, and a profit buffer, divide by the hours you can genuinely bill, and out comes the hourly and day rate that actually pays your life. Not a salary divided by 2,080.
Your numbers
What you want to pay yourself per year, after costs and tax.
Software, hardware, insurance, subscriptions, accountant, everything.
On top of pay + costs, for savings, reinvestment, slow months.
Income + self employment tax as a share of revenue.
Hours you can actually invoice, not your whole working week.
52 minus holidays, sick days, and time off.
The verdict
Hourly rate
$110
Day rate
$878
~8 billable hours.
Monthly target
$10,515
Revenue to bill / yr
$126,181
Pay, costs, profit & tax.
Where every billed dollar goes
Reality check
You're billing 25 of a 40-hour week (63% utilization). Every unbilled hour is why this rate is higher than a salary suggests — and right.
Scenario · utilization sets the rate
What your billable hours do to the number
Hourly rate
$110
Day rate
$878
The fewer hours you can actually bill, the higher each one has to be priced to hit the same take-home. At 25 billable hours a week your rate is $110 — which is why selling outcomes beats selling time.
Sensitivity · rate by billable hours
Same income, different utilization
| Billable / week | Hourly rate | Day rate |
|---|---|---|
| 10 hrs | $274 | $2,194 |
| 15 hrs | $183 | $1,463 |
| 20 hrs | $137 | $1,097 |
| 25 hrs | $110 | $878 |
| 30 hrs | $91 | $731 |
| 35 hrs | $78 | $627 |
Billing 1,150 hours a year, not 2,080, is the whole point. Admin, sales, and downtime aren't billable — so your rate carries them.
Your move
Knowing your rate is step one. Getting clients who pay it is the game.
Charge about $110/hour (≈ $878/day) to hit $70,000 take-home — billing 1150 hours a year.
The calculator hands you a number. Filling your pipeline with clients happy to pay it is the harder, more valuable part, and it's a marketing problem, which is what I do. If you're a freelancer or studio who wants better fit, better paying clients, book the call and I'll tell you, free, where I'd start.
Plain English
Your rate isn't a number you pick. It's a number you solve for.
Here's the trap: you take a salary you'd be happy with, say $70,000, divide by 2,080 working hours, get ~$34/hour, and quote that. It's catastrophically low. That math assumes every hour is billable, ignores your business costs, ignores tax, and ignores that you have no employer covering your benefits, downtime, or admin. Freelancers who price this way work twice as hard for half as much.
The honest calculation runs backwards. Decide the income you want to keep. Add the expenses of running the business. Add a profit buffer so you're not living invoice to invoice. Gross all of that up for tax. Then, the part everyone forgets, divide not by all your hours but by your billable ones. After admin, sales, marketing, and email, most freelancers bill 20 to 30 hours a week, not 40. That smaller denominator is why real rates are higher than they feel.
This calculator does exactly that. Plug in your target take home, costs, tax, profit, and realistic billable hours, and it returns the hourly and day rate that genuinely funds the life you're charging for. The number is usually higher than people expect, which is the point. Charging it is how freelancing pays better than the job you left, not worse.
The formula
Rate = (income + expenses) × (1 + profit) ÷ (1 − tax) ÷ billable hours
Want $70,000 take home, with $9,000 of costs, a 15% buffer, 28% tax, billing 25 hours across 46 weeks (1,150 billable hours)? You need to bill about $126,000. Divided by 1,150 hours, that's roughly $109/hour, or an ~$875 day rate. Quote the naive '$34/hour' instead and you'd fall over $90,000 short of your own goal.
Where freelance rates tend to land
Typical 2025 ranges by discipline (US/UK/EU blended). Wide, because experience and niche move them enormously, use them only to sanity check the rate the calculator gives you:
| Discipline | Typical hourly | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Copywriting | $75 to 200 | Higher for conversion / sales copy |
| Design | $65 to 150 | Brand & UX at the top end |
| Web & development | $80 to 200 | Specialism driven |
| Marketing strategy | $100 to 250 | Often priced on value instead |
| Consulting | $150 to 400+ | Seniority driven |
Source: Freelance rate benchmarks (blended US/UK/EU) · 2025
Your rate feels too high (or too low). Read it.
The rate looks shockingly high.
It's not. It's the true cost of your time once downtime, tax, and costs are counted. The fix isn't a lower rate; it's confidence and better fit clients.
Your billable hours are near 40.
Almost nobody bills 40. If you're genuinely billing 38+, you're doing zero sales, admin, or marketing, which isn't sustainable. Lower it to reality and watch the rate rise.
The day rate prices you out of your market.
Either your niche underpays (move upmarket) or you need fewer, higher value clients. Don't solve it by quietly working unpaid hours.
Profit buffer set to zero.
Then one slow month or one bad debt sinks you. Build in 10 to 20% so the business, not just you, can survive variance.
Tax set aside guessed low.
Underestimating tax is how freelancers get a brutal year end bill. Use your real combined rate; it's better to over reserve.
How to actually charge it
01Quote the rate, then stop talking
The most common pricing mistake is justifying or discounting before the client even reacts. State it plainly and let silence do its work.
02Price the value, not the hour where you can
Hourly caps your income at your time. For outcomes worth far more than your hours, switch to project or value based pricing.
03Raise rates on new clients first
Test a higher number on incoming leads before touching existing ones. You'll learn the market bears more than you feared, fast.
04Protect your billable hours
Every unbilled hour raises the rate your billable hours must carry. Cut low value admin and unpaid 'quick calls' ruthlessly.
05Charge for scope, not availability
Retainers and packages beat hourly for both stability and earnings. Anchor on the result you deliver, not the clock.
06Revisit the number every year
Costs, skill, and demand all rise. Re run this annually and adjust, a rate you set two years ago is almost certainly too low now.
The vocabulary
- Billable hours
- Hours you can actually invoice a client for, typically 50 to 70% of your working time once admin and sales are removed.
- Day rate
- A flat fee for a day of work, usually ~8 billable hours. Common in agencies and for senior freelancers.
- Utilization
- The share of your working time that is billable. Lower utilization means each billable hour must be priced higher.
- Profit buffer
- Margin built on top of pay and costs to absorb slow periods, bad debt, and reinvestment.
- Value based pricing
- Pricing tied to the outcome you create for the client rather than the hours you spend.
Freelance pricing questions, straight answers
Work backwards. Add the income you want to keep and your annual business expenses, add a profit buffer, gross it up for tax, then divide by the hours you can genuinely bill in a year (not 2,080, usually far fewer). That gives the rate that actually funds your goals, which is what this calculator computes.
Keep going
A calculator tells you what. A call tells you what to do about it.
Send me the account behind these numbers. I'll tell you straight where the money's leaking and what I'd fix first — free, and you keep it whether you hire me or not.