Price your freelance work from the income you actually want to keep: enter your target take-home pay, business expenses and tax rate, then your realistic billable hours — and read the gross revenue, hourly rate and day rate that make the numbers work. Everything updates live in your browser; the defaults are the worked example.
The model: billable hours = billable hours per week × working weeks per year. Gross revenue needed = (take-home + expenses) ÷ (1 − tax rate). With a buffer, that gross is multiplied by (1 + buffer %). Hourly rate = gross revenue ÷ billable hours; day rate = hourly rate × 8.
Weekly equivalent = required gross revenue ÷ working weeks per year; monthly equivalent = required gross revenue ÷ 12. Both are revenue targets, not pay — tax and expenses still come out of them, exactly as the model above sets out.
Same income target, expenses, tax and buffer — only the billable hours per week move, 25% either side of your plan. Billing more hours spreads the same gross revenue thinner, so the rate you need falls; billing fewer pushes it up.
| Scenario | Billable hrs / week | Billable hrs / year | Hourly rate | Day rate |
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The hourly and day rate you need to hit a target take-home income — from your expenses, tax rate and realistic billable hours, with a billable-hours sensitivity check.
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Work out the freelance hourly and day rate you need to charge from the take-home income you want, your annual business expenses and your estimated tax rate, spread over your realistic billable hours — with required gross revenue, weekly and monthly equivalents, an optional profit buffer, and a sensitivity check for billing more or fewer hours.
A freelancer wants $90,000 of take-home pay, spends $12,000 a year on business expenses and estimates a 22% tax rate, billing 20 hours a week for 52 weeks — 1,040 billable hours. Gross revenue needed is ($90,000 + $12,000) ÷ (1 − 0.22) = $102,000 ÷ 0.78 = $130,769.23. The hourly rate is $130,769.23 ÷ 1,040 = $125.74, the day rate is $125.74 × 8 = $1,005.92, the weekly equivalent is $2,514.79 and the monthly equivalent is $10,897.44. With a 10% profit buffer the gross rises to $143,846.15 and the rate to $138.31 an hour. Billing 25% more hours (25 a week, 1,300 a year) drops the needed rate to $100.59; billing 25% fewer (15 a week, 780 a year) raises it to $167.65.
Billable hours = billable hours per week × working weeks per year. Gross revenue needed = (target take-home + annual business expenses) ÷ (1 − tax rate), so the amount left after tax exactly covers take-home plus expenses. With a profit buffer, that gross is multiplied by (1 + buffer %). Hourly rate = gross revenue ÷ billable hours; day rate = hourly rate × 8; weekly equivalent = gross revenue ÷ working weeks per year; monthly equivalent = gross revenue ÷ 12. The sensitivity table holds gross revenue fixed and recomputes the hourly rate at billable hours per week 25% below and 25% above the entered value. A tax rate of 100% or more, or zero billable hours, has no answer and shows a dash with an explanation instead of a division by zero.
In three steps: add your target take-home pay and business expenses, gross that total up for tax by dividing by (1 − tax rate) to get the revenue you must bill, then divide by your billable hours for the year (hours per week × weeks per year). At $90,000 take-home, $12,000 expenses and 22% tax over 1,040 billable hours, that is $102,000 ÷ 0.78 ÷ 1,040 = $125.74 an hour.
Only time a client pays for — project delivery, billable calls and paid revisions. Admin, invoicing, marketing, pitching, learning and fixing your own setup are working hours but not billable ones. Many full-time freelancers work 35–40 hours a week and bill 15–25 of them; using your working hours instead of billable hours understates the rate you need.
Because tax is taken off the gross, not off the take-home. To keep $102,000 after 22% tax you must bill $102,000 ÷ 0.78 = $130,769.23 — adding 22% on top ($124,440) would leave only $97,063 after tax, short of the target. Dividing by (1 − rate) is what makes the after-tax amount land exactly on target.
The buffer is margin above break-even — for savings, quiet months, unpaid invoices and surprises. 10% is a common starting point: on the worked example it lifts the gross from $130,769.23 to $143,846.15 and the rate from $125.74 to $138.31. If your income is uneven or a single client dominates, a larger buffer is the honest choice.
Directly: fewer working weeks means fewer billable hours, so each hour must carry more of the same annual target. Dropping from 52 to 48 working weeks at 20 billable hours a week cuts billable hours from 1,040 to 960 and raises the needed rate by about 8% — holidays are not free for a freelancer, they are priced into the rate.
In this calculator, yes — a day is modelled as eight billable hours, so the day rate is the hourly rate × 8. If you sell days but only bill six hours of them, your effective day should be six times the hourly rate; quote from the hourly figure so the day you actually deliver is covered.
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