Freelancer calculators

Choose the right calculator

An employee's hourly pay and a freelancer's client rate cover different things. Start with available billable time, account for business expenses, then build a quote around the scope of a specific project.

• Billable Hours Calculator — Estimate annual client hours after allowing for administration, marketing and other non-billable work.

• Freelance Rate Calculator — Turn target income, expenses, a tax reserve and billable capacity into an estimated client hourly rate.

• Hourly Rate Calculator — Convert an annual salary into an hourly equivalent for a chosen work schedule. This is not automatically a freelance billing rate.

• Project Price Calculator — Combine project hours, your rate, direct expenses and contingency into a fixed-price quote.

Before you calculate

Use realistic working weeks and non-billable hours. For salary comparisons, paid weeks can include paid time off. A tax reserve is a planning assumption rather than a country-specific tax calculation. Include project expenses once, and make clear which revisions or deliverables a quote covers.

A practical example

A schedule of 40 hours per week for 46 weeks contains 1,840 working hours. Subtracting 16 non-billable hours per week leaves 1,104 annual client hours and 60% billable utilization. Use billable hours, rather than all working hours, when planning how a client rate supports annual income.