Freelance Rate Calculator
FreeCalculate your ideal hourly or project rate based on your goals and expenses.
Runs entirely in your browser. Nothing you enter is uploaded or stored.
The portion of your working hours actually billable to clients — the rest is admin, marketing, and unpaid pitching. This is commonly overestimated; many freelancers land somewhere around 60–80%, but be honest about your own number rather than assuming a figure.
Freelance rate calculation (target income $70,000.00, expenses $5,000.00, 25% tax, 48wk × 40hr/wk, 70% billable): Required annual revenue: $100,000.00 Required billable hours/year: 1,344 Required hourly rate: $74.40
This is a starting-point estimate based entirely on the numbers you enter — it doesn't know what clients in your market or industry actually pay, it only works out what YOU need to charge to hit YOUR income goal. It's not a market-rate recommendation or tax advice.
This tool runs entirely in your browser — nothing you enter is uploaded or stored.Once you've settled on a rate, BillCraft AI makes it easy to send professional invoices at that rate.
How it works
How does this calculator arrive at a rate?
It works backward from a target income. Starting from the annual income you want to actually take home, it adds your annual business expenses and grosses the total up for your estimated tax rate to find the revenue you need to bring in. Then it divides that required revenue by your actual billable hours per year — not your total working hours, but the portion of them you can actually bill to clients — to arrive at a required hourly rate.
Is this telling me what I should charge based on market rates?
No — and that's an important distinction. This tool has no idea what clients in your market, industry, or experience level actually pay; it only does the arithmetic of "here's what YOU need to charge to hit YOUR numbers," based entirely on the income, expenses, and time figures you enter. That's a more honest starting point than a tool pretending to know competitive rates it has no way of actually knowing. Treat the result as a floor worth understanding, not a market benchmark.
Why does "billable percentage" matter, and why not just use my total work hours?
Because not every hour you work is an hour you bill. Administrative work, marketing, proposals, unpaid pitching, and client communication all take real time without directly generating revenue — and it's easy to underestimate how much. If you calculate your rate against total working hours instead of actual billable hours, you'll systematically undercharge, since the hours you don't bill still have to be paid for by the ones you do.
Is anything I enter here sent anywhere?
No — every calculation happens locally in your browser.