Freelance Rate Calculator
Converts a target annual income into an hourly or project rate, accounting for unbillable time and overhead costs.
| Bucket | Annual Total | Hourly Equivalent | Share |
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How to Use This Tool
- 1 Enter your desired net annual take-home income.
- 2 Specify how many working weeks you plan to work per year (accounting for time off).
- 3 Set your realistic billable hours per week (typically 20 to 25 hours for solo operators).
- 4 Include annual business overhead (software, accounting, equipment, hosting).
- 5 Set your estimated self-employment tax percentage to view your mandatory gross hourly, daily, and weekly billing rates.
The Unbillable Hours Trap
New freelancers routinely underprice because they divide their old salary by 2000 hours and stop there, without accounting for the fact that a freelancer does not bill 40 hours a week. Unbillable time (admin, proposals, client calls that go nowhere, slow months) typically eats a third to half of total working hours.
Overhead (software, insurance, a portion of taxes that an employer used to cover) also has to come out of the rate, not out of some separate budget.
This calculator forces those numbers into the open: annual income goal, realistic billable hours, overhead, and taxes, then reverse engineers the rate needed to actually hit the goal. The output usually comes in noticeably higher than what someone expected, which is normal and is the actual reason so many freelancers stay underpaid for years.