Freelance Rate Calculator

Curated by Vinod Kumar Jain & Amit Jain · All Frontier Global · free, no login

Most freelance rates are set by looking sideways at what others charge. This works the other way: from the income you actually need, the days you can actually bill, and the costs you actually carry, back to the day rate that delivers it. No tax rate is embedded — the set-aside percentage is yours to enter, because only you and your accountant know it.

The arithmetic, in order

• Working weeks = 52 − weeks off · Billable days a year = billable days per week × working weeks
• Revenue needed before set-aside = (target income + overheads) ÷ (1 − set-aside %)
• With buffer = that figure × (1 + buffer %)
• Day rate = revenue needed with buffer ÷ billable days a year · Hourly rate = day rate ÷ billable hours in a day

Honest limits

• No tax rate is embedded and none is suggested. Rates and thresholds differ by country, by entity type and by how much you earn, and they change annually. The set-aside percentage is yours; if you do not know it, ask an accountant before pricing work, not after.
• Billable days is where people lie to themselves. Selling, invoicing, admin, training and rework are not billable. Five days a week is not a real number for a working freelancer; three to four usually is.
• The output is a floor, not a price. It tells you what you must earn per billable day to hit your target. What the market will pay is a separate question, and if the two do not meet, the answer is usually fewer, better clients rather than a lower rate.
• Overheads are usually understated. Include the invisible ones: pension you now fund yourself, equipment replacement, professional insurance, the accountant.

Sources

None, and deliberately so: no salary benchmark, market rate card or tax table is embedded, fetched or implied. Every figure is one you entered, and the arithmetic is written out above.

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