💼 Freelance Hourly Rate Calculator
Your rate isn't salary ÷ hours. Find what you actually need to charge.
Not your total working hours — only the hours you can actually bill a client for.
How This Is Calculated
Required Revenue = (Desired Income + Expenses) ÷ (1 − Tax Rate). This calculator then divides that revenue by your total realistic billable hours per year (billable hours/week × working weeks/year) to get your minimum sustainable hourly rate.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why is my freelance rate higher than salary ÷ hours?
A salaried employee's employer separately covers half of payroll taxes, health insurance, retirement
matching, and paid time off. As a freelancer, all of that comes out of your rate.
How many hours can I realistically bill per week?
Most full-time freelancers can bill 25-30 hours per week even when "working" 40+ hours, since time goes to
admin, invoicing, marketing, and finding new clients.
Guide: understanding your result
- Hourly rate ≈ (take-home goal + business expenses) ÷ (1 − tax rate) ÷ billable hours per year.
- Self-employed people pay self-employment tax of 15.3% (Social Security and Medicare) on most of their net earnings, in addition to income tax.
- Billable hours are far fewer than working hours: sales, admin and learning time cannot be invoiced.
Worked example
To take home $80,000 with $12,000 of expenses, an estimated 30% combined tax rate and 25 billable hours a week for 46 weeks, you need about $114 per hour.
Common mistakes to avoid
- Converting a salary to an hourly rate by dividing by 2,080 hours.
- Forgetting health insurance, retirement savings and unpaid time off.
- Not setting aside money for quarterly estimated tax payments.
Frequently asked questions
When are estimated taxes due?
Usually in April, June, September and January for the federal return; see the Quarterly Estimated Tax calculator for amounts.
Official sources
Examples are calculated live from the same data the calculator uses and are for education only — they are not financial, tax or investment advice.
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See all →✔ Reviewed by GelirLab Editöryal Ekibi · How we check our calculators