Freelance Rate Calculator
What should you actually charge?
Start from the life you want to fund — not a guess. This calculator builds your rate up from take-home pay, taxes, benefits, time off, and the hours you can really bill.
Free · No signup · Nothing leaves your browser · Every number explained below
Understand the number
A rate you can’t explain is a rate you’ll discount. Here’s exactly what yours is made of — and how it moves when the year doesn’t go to plan.
Where each dollar goes
your billing target, split by what it funds
Worth knowing
If the year goes differently
Same plan, different share of billable work — the swing is bigger than most people expect.
Sanity-check a rate
Already have a number in mind — or an offer on the table? See what it really pays.
Annual take-home
—
Straight conversion under the same assumptions — no safety buffer reserved.
How this works
Four steps, no black box. The numbers below are your numbers and update as you change the inputs.
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Step 1
Gross up for taxes
You want — after tax. At an effective —, that means earning — pre-tax.
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Step 2
Add the employer costs you now carry
Health insurance, retirement, and business expenses add — — things a salary quietly included.
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Step 3
Add a buffer (and any platform cut)
A — buffer for slow months and surprises — plus marketplace fees, if any — brings your billing target to —.
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Step 4
Divide by hours you can really bill
52 weeks minus time off leaves — working days — — hours. At — billable, that’s — invoiceable hours. Divide, round up: —/hour.
Assumptions worth knowing: the tax rate is a single effective rate you control, not a bracket-by-bracket filing estimate; health insurance and retirement are treated as pre-tax costs (for US freelancers they are largely deductible); and the buffer exists precisely to absorb the imprecision. Planning tool — not tax advice.
Where do real rates land?
Your floor comes from your numbers. The market sets the ceiling — for US knowledge work (design, development, writing, marketing), rates typically cluster like this:
| Experience | Typical hourly (USD) | |
|---|---|---|
| Early career | $35–75 | Building a portfolio; watch that your floor doesn’t sit above this band |
| Mid-level | $75–125 | Reliable specialists with a track record |
| Senior | $125–200 | Deep expertise, minimal hand-holding |
| Specialist consultant | $200–500+ | Named expertise, outcomes over hours |
If your calculated floor lands above your market band, don’t quietly eat the difference — close the gap by raising utilization, trimming costs, or moving upmarket. If it lands below, congratulations: that’s room to charge more.
Questions freelancers actually ask
How do I calculate my freelance hourly rate?
Start from the annual take-home you want and gross it up for taxes. Add the costs an employer used to cover — health insurance, retirement, business expenses — plus a 15–20% buffer. Then divide by the hours you can actually invoice: working hours × a realistic billable share (usually 50–70%), after subtracting time off. That’s exactly what this page does, with every intermediate number shown.
Why is the result so much higher than my old salary ÷ 2,080?
Because salary ÷ 2,080 ignores everything your employer quietly paid: their half of payroll taxes, health insurance, retirement match, paid time off, equipment, and the sales and admin hours you now work for free. A sustainable freelance rate is typically 2–3× the raw hourly equivalent of a comparable salary — the insight lines above compute your exact multiple.
How many billable hours per week are realistic?
Most independents invoice 50–70% of their working time — roughly 20–28 hours of a 40-hour week. The rest disappears into finding work, proposals, admin, and email. Plugging in 40 billable hours is the single most common way freelancers underprice themselves.
What percentage should I set aside for taxes?
A common US rule of thumb is 25–30% of profit (federal income tax + self-employment tax), or 35–40% for high earners and high-tax states. Self-employment tax alone is 15.3% on 92.35% of net earnings, with half deductible. Set your best estimate on the slider — and confirm it with an accountant once real money is moving.
Should I charge hourly, by the day, or per project?
Treat the hourly number as your internal floor, not necessarily what goes on the invoice. Day rates suit embedded work; project prices reward speed and expertise. Whatever you quote, sanity-check it against the floor: estimated hours × rate, plus margin for revisions. The project minimum shown above exists because small gigs carry fixed overhead — scoping, onboarding, invoicing — that a tiny invoice never repays.
How much more should a contractor charge than an employee makes?
At minimum 30–50% above the salary’s raw hourly equivalent — a contractor covers both halves of payroll taxes, their own benefits, unpaid time off, business costs, and the gaps between engagements. The Contract vs Full-Time calculator works out that premium from a specific salary; on its defaults a $100,000 salary comes out around 1.5×. The larger 2–3× figure above is a different comparison: it prices a whole freelance business, including unbillable hours, rather than converting one salary to one rate.
When should I raise my rates?
When you’ve been fully booked for two or three months, when your costs or skills have grown, or at minimum once a year. Quote the new rate to new clients first; move long-standing clients at the next natural boundary — a new project, a new year, a renewal.
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