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Freelance rate calculator

Work backward from the income you actually need — through expenses, taxes, and the hours that never get billed — to the hourly, day, and weekly rate that gets you there.

Your numbers

Presets

Hourly rate
$92
Day rate
$735
8 billable hrs
Weekly rate
$2,389
Revenue needed
$114,667
before tax
Working weeks / year48 wk
Billable hours / week26 hrs
Billable hours / year1,248 hrs
Non-billable time35% of week

Where the revenue goes

Take-home income$80,000
Business expenses$6,000
Taxes$28,667

On this page

  • The formula
  • Why billable ratio is the real lever
  • Handling taxes
  • Turning this into a quote
  • FAQ
Guide

Pricing your time without guessing

Most freelancers set a rate by copying whatever number a peer mentioned, then wonder why they're working nights to hit their income goal. The calculator above works the problem backward — from the income you actually need, through every hour that doesn't get billed, to the number you put on a quote.

The formula

Four numbers combine into one rate:

Revenue needed = (target income + annual expenses) / (1 − tax rate)
Working weeks  = 52 − weeks off
Billable hours = hours/week × billable % × working weeks
Hourly rate    = revenue needed / billable hours
Put the rate on a page clients trust

Back it up with live projects, not just a number.

A devbio shows real shipped projects, GitHub activity, and revenue — the proof that makes a rate easy to justify instead of just asserted.

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The gross-up on tax matters: if you need $80,000 to actually live on and set aside 25% for taxes, you don't need to bill $80,000 × 1.25 — you need to bill enough that after the 25% comes out, $80,000 is left. That's $80,000 / 0.75 = $106,667, not $100,000. Small difference at low tax rates, a real one above 30%.

Why billable ratio is the real lever

New freelancers consistently overestimate how many of their working hours are actually billable. A 40-hour week rarely means 40 billable hours — invoicing, proposals, client calls that aren't on a specific project, admin, learning, marketing yourself all eat real time and none of it bills directly.

65% is a realistic default for an established solo freelancer with a steady pipeline. New freelancers spending heavy time on business development should model 40-50%. This one input moves your rate more than almost anything else in the calculator — drop billable ratio from 65% to 50% at the same income target and your hourly rate jumps roughly 30%, because the same annual revenue has to come from meaningfully fewer hours.

This is also why "just work more hours" is a weak lever compared to raising the rate or the billable ratio — more raw hours per week without more billable hours just adds unpaid time.

Handling taxes

The tax set-aside here is deliberately a single blended percentage, not a full tax calculation — self-employment tax, income tax bracket, and deductible expenses all vary by country and situation. As a starting point: a lot of solo freelancers in the US set aside 25-30% (self-employment tax plus income tax); freelancers with an incorporated business and W-2-style payroll often land lower. Adjust the slider to match what an accountant has actually told you, or set it to 0% and add your own tax line separately if you'd rather reason about gross revenue directly.

Turning this into a quote

The calculator gives you a floor, not necessarily the number you quote. Three adjustments worth making before you send a proposal:

  • Fixed-price projects. Estimate hours honestly, then add 15-25% buffer — nearly every project runs over, and a fixed price means you eat the overage at your calculated rate, not above it.
  • Rush / short-notice work. A 25-50% premium for compressed timelines is standard — it's pricing the opportunity cost of the client work you have to say no to, not greed.
  • Long-term retainers. Predictable income is worth discounting slightly (5-15% below your project rate) in exchange for the stability — but only if the retainer genuinely displaces other billable work, not if it's incremental capacity.

FAQ

Should I quote hourly or a fixed project price?
Fixed-price protects clients from scope surprises and protects you from being perceived as slow; hourly protects you from scope creep. Use this calculator's hourly output either way — for a fixed quote, multiply it by your honest hour estimate plus buffer (see Quoting above), not by guessing a round number.
How often should I recalculate my rate?
At minimum yearly, or whenever a major input changes — a new recurring expense (health insurance, a tool subscription), a tax-bracket-relevant income jump, or a real shift in how much of your week goes to non-billable work as you take on more clients.
My market rate is lower than what this calculates. Now what?
That gap is real information, not a reason to ignore the math: either your income target needs to come down, your expenses need to shrink, or your billable ratio needs to go up (fewer, better-fit clients beat more lower-value ones for exactly this reason). Undercutting the number to match the market usually means working more hours to hit the same income — solving the wrong variable.
Does this account for benefits like health insurance?
Only if you put it in "Annual business expenses" — this calculator treats health insurance, retirement contributions, and any other benefit you'd get as a W-2 employee as a cost you have to price into your rate, since as a freelancer nobody else is covering it.
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