💼 Freelance Hourly Rate Calculator

Enter your desired annual income, business expenses, and billable hours to calculate the hourly rate you need to charge.

Desired Annual Income

Annual Business Expenses

Billable Hours per Week

Weeks Worked per Year

How the rate is worked out

The calculator adds your target income to your business costs, then spreads that total across the hours you expect to actually sell:

revenue needed = desired income + annual expenses
billable hours = billable hours per week × weeks worked
hourly rate    = revenue needed ÷ billable hours
day rate       = hourly rate × 8

With the defaults, $80,000 plus $10,000 of expenses is $90,000 to earn, and 25 billable hours across 48 weeks is 1,200 hours. That gives $75.00 an hour and a $600 day rate.

What the four inputs really mean

Desired annual income is before your own tax. It is what the business leaves you, not what lands in your bank. Self-employment tax and income tax come out of that figure rather than on top of it, so if you need $80,000 to live on, the number in the box has to be meaningfully larger.
Billable hours are not worked hours. Twenty-five billable hours inside a 40-hour week is 62.5% utilisation; pitching, invoicing, admin and learning fill the rest. Typing 40 here assumes every hour sells and quietly values your unpaid ones at zero.
Weeks worked is where time off lives. Nobody pays you for a freelance holiday, so 48 weeks builds four unpaid weeks into the rate.
Expenses means software, insurance, hardware and accounting fees.

No tax of any kind is applied here. The rate covers income plus expenses and nothing more - take your own jurisdiction's rules to an accountant before you quote from it.

Frequently asked questions

What hourly rate do I need to earn $100,000 freelancing?

On the default 1,200 billable hours with $10,000 of expenses, $110,000 of revenue over 1,200 hours is $91.67 an hour. Fewer billable hours push it up fast.

Why is a freelance rate so much higher than my old salary per hour?

A salary is divided by roughly 2,080 paid hours a year and an employer absorbs half your payroll tax, plus benefits, equipment and idle time. Your rate has to cover all of that from 1,200 sold hours instead.

How many billable hours a year is realistic?

Full-time work is about 2,080 hours a year. Established freelancers commonly bill between 1,000 and 1,400 of them; the 25 hours over 48 weeks used here is 1,200.