What your hourly rateactually pays a year.
An hourly rate hides the number that matters. Type in your rate and how you really work, and this turns it into annual, monthly, weekly, and daily income — then runs it backwards so you can see the rate a target salary demands.
Your numbers
What you charge or earn per hour, before tax.
Billable or paid hours in a typical week — not hours at the desk.
Weeks you actually work. 52 minus holidays, vacation, and slow stretches.
The verdict
Annual income
$100,000
Monthly
$8,333
Weekly
$2,000
Daily (5-day week)
$400
Weekly pay split across five working days.
How the year breaks down
Hours worked / year
2,000
Full-time is ~2,080 (40h × 52w). You're at 96% of that — every week you don't work moves the annual figure.
Reverse · salary → hourly
Rate needed
$60
Raise rate by
$10
At 40h a week over 50 weeks (2,000 hours), clearing $120,000 needs $60 an hour — $10 more than your current $50. Want it without more hours? Raise the value per hour, not the hours.
Sensitivity · hours change everything
Same rate, different weeks
| Hours / week | Annual income | Monthly |
|---|---|---|
| 30h | $75,000 | $6,250 |
| 35h | $87,500 | $7,292 |
| 40h | $100,000 | $8,333 |
| 45h | $112,500 | $9,375 |
| 50h | $125,000 | $10,417 |
Your $50 rate never moves across this table — only the hours do. Five hours a week, held over 50 weeks, is the difference between two very different salaries.
Your move
You see the number. I'll help you raise it.
$50/hr × 40h × 50wk = $100,000/yr ($8,333/mo).
Bring me your rate and your real schedule, and in 30 minutes I'll show you where the income is leaking — unbillable hours, soft pricing, or thin weeks — and the one move that lifts the annual figure fastest. Free, and yours to keep either way.
Plain English
An hourly rate is a price. Salary is the truth.
Converting hourly to salary is simple arithmetic — rate times hours times weeks — but the answer changes how you think about your time. The same $50/hour reads very differently when you see it land as $104,000 a year at 40 hours over 52 weeks versus $60,000 once real billable hours and time off get honest.
The trap is the assumption baked into most converters: that you work 40 hours every week of the year. Almost nobody does. Employees get holidays and vacation; freelancers lose weeks to sales, admin, sick days, and gaps between contracts. The number that pays your bills is built on the weeks you actually work, not the calendar's 52.
This calculator keeps both ends honest. Enter your rate, your real weekly hours, and the weeks you truly work, and it returns annual, monthly, weekly, and daily income. Then it reverses: pick a salary you want to hit and it tells you the hourly rate that gets you there at your current schedule — the number to quote, or the raise to ask for.
The formula
Annual = Hourly rate × Hours per week × Weeks per year
$50/hour × 40 hours × 50 weeks = $100,000 a year. That's $8,333 a month, $2,000 a week, and $400 a day. Drop to 45 working weeks and the same rate pays $90,000 — a $10,000 swing from time off alone.
The number came back lower than you expected. Why?
You assumed 52 paid weeks.
Salaried employees are paid through vacation; freelancers are not. If you're self-employed, drop weeks-per-year to the weeks you truly invoice — usually 44 to 48 — before you trust the annual figure.
Hours-per-week counts desk time, not billable.
Sales calls, proposals, and admin don't pay. Most freelancers bill 25–30 of a 40-hour week. Enter billable hours and your effective annual income gets honest fast.
Annual looks fine but daily looks thin.
Daily income (a five-day week) is the gut check. If a day of your time is worth less than a single small project should be, your rate is the problem, not your volume.
Your salary target needs an impossible rate.
If the reverse-solve demands a rate the market won't pay, the fix isn't grinding more hours — it's raising the value per hour (positioning, packaging, outcomes) so the same schedule clears the goal.
Make each hour pay more
01Price the outcome, not the hour
Clients buy results. Quote a project fee that bakes in a rate you'd never get away with hourly, and your effective hourly quietly climbs.
02Cut non-billable drag
Every hour in admin or chasing leads is an unpaid hour. Systematize proposals and onboarding so more of the week actually invoices.
03Protect your working weeks
Unplanned gaps between contracts are the silent salary killer. A small retainer base smooths the weeks-per-year that drives the whole number.
04Raise the rate on new clients first
You don't have to re-quote everyone. Lift the rate for the next client and let the average pull up without a single hard conversation.
05Bundle into retainers
Predictable monthly revenue beats sporadic high hourly. It stabilizes weeks-per-year, which moves annual income more than the rate itself.
06Drop the bottom of your book
The lowest-rate, highest-hassle clients cap your effective hourly. Replacing one of them with a better-fit client raises the whole average.
07Add a value tier
Offer a premium option most won't take. A few who do pull your blended hourly up and reset what your time is worth.
08Bill for revisions and scope
Unpaid 'quick changes' are pure rate erosion. Scope tightly and charge for the rest; your real hourly depends on it.
The vocabulary
- Hourly rate
- What you earn or charge per hour worked, before tax and overhead.
- Annual salary
- Total income across a year: hourly rate × hours per week × weeks per year.
- Billable hours
- Hours a client actually pays for, as opposed to admin, sales, and downtime.
- Weeks per year
- The weeks you genuinely work and earn — 52 minus holidays, vacation, and gaps.
- FTE hours
- Full-time-equivalent hours, the ~2,080-hour standard (40 × 52) used as the baseline for salary math.
- Effective hourly
- Actual annual income divided by total hours worked, including the unpaid ones.
Hourly to salary, straight answers
Multiply your hourly rate by the hours you work per week, then by the weeks you work per year. At 40 hours over 52 weeks, $30/hour is $62,400 a year. Use the weeks you actually work, not 52, if you take real time off or are self-employed.
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.