Freelance Rate Calculator
Free freelance rate calculator: turn your income goal, costs, time off, and billable share into the hourly rate you need to charge.
Enter your targets
Set what you want to earn, what your business costs, and how much of your time is actually billable.
The hourly rate to hit your goal
The rate covers your income goal plus business costs across only the hours you can actually bill.
Billable share is the lever
Only part of a working week is billable. Admin, sales, and unpaid work all lower the share, which raises the rate you need.
Count every business cost
Include software, hardware, insurance, taxes set aside, and any subcontractors in your yearly costs.
Treat it as a minimum
This is a floor, not a ceiling. Charge more when demand, value, or specialization allows it.
How the freelance rate is calculated
Working hours per week times your working weeks, reduced to the billable share, gives the hours you can actually invoice each year. Your income goal plus business costs, divided by those billable hours, is the rate you need to charge.
The number is only as good as your billable-share estimate. Sandtime.io shows the real split between billable and non-billable time, so the next rate you set is based on evidence, not a guess.
Freelance rate questions
Why is the rate higher than my target income divided by hours?
Because you cannot bill every hour you work. The rate has to cover the admin, sales, invoicing, and learning that no client pays for, which means it is divided across billable hours only, not across all of them.
What should I put in weeks off?
Every week you will not be working: holiday, public holidays, sick days, and the quiet weeks between projects. Leaving them out prices a year that does not exist and quietly lowers the rate.
What counts as business costs?
Software, insurance, equipment, accounting, workspace, and anything else the business pays for before you do. They come off the top, so the rate has to carry them.
How do I know my billable percentage?
Most people guess high. Seventy percent is a common working assumption, but the only way to know your own figure is to record where the hours go for a few weeks and look.
Is the result what I should charge?
It is a floor, not a price. What a client will pay depends on the value of the work and the market you sell into. Knowing the floor tells you which projects are worth taking.
Know your real billable share
Sandtime.io records billable and non-billable time as you work, so you can set rates on real utilization and protect your margin. Free for unlimited users, without surveillance.