Tool

Earnings per hour

A freelance rate copied from the cheapest profile on a marketplace usually forgets the hours nobody pays for: proposals, revisions, bookkeeping, and the weeks you are ill or on holiday. This calculator starts from the income you want to keep and works backwards to an hourly and day rate.

The result is a planning number, not a quote you must send. Clients buy outcomes. Use the rate to decide whether a fixed price is enough, then write the scope down. Taxes are not included — “income you want” should be what you need before or after tax, and you should know which one you typed.

Income you want per year Business expenses per year (software, insurance, equipment) Hours you can bill in a good week Weeks you will bill

Twenty billable hours in a 40-hour week is normal when you also find the work. If every hour is billable, you are not counting sales or admin.

What people get wrong

• They divide a salary by 2,000 hours. Almost nobody bills 2,000 hours.
• They ignore platform fees. If a marketplace takes 20%, divide the rate by 0.8 before you type it into the gig.
• They treat a day rate as eight paid hours. A day rate here is your hourly rate times the billable hours you can defend in a day, defaulting to the weekly figure divided by five.

Next: freelancing on Upwork and Fiverr, or the side-hustle calculator if the work is priced by the hour you can already see.