Business Calculators

Freelance Hourly Rate Calculator

Work out the hourly rate you need to charge clients, starting from the income you actually want to take home and working back through overhead, taxes, and the time you can realistically bill.

Inputs

Income & taxes

Desired annual take-home income

Estimated tax rate (income + self-employment)

Rough combined rate on what you'll actually owe. Check your real marginal rate with an accountant — this only grosses up the number so tax doesn't eat into your target income.

Working time

Working weeks per year

Working hours per week

Share of working hours that are billable

Time spent on admin, proposals, marketing, and unpaid work isn't billable. Lower this from 100% if that's a real chunk of your week.

Overhead

Annual business overhead

Software, insurance, equipment, home-office costs, professional fees — anything the business pays for that isn't your own income.

Target hourly rate

Fill the form and press Calculate.

How the target rate is calculated

This follows the standard "income + overhead ÷ billable hours" method used across freelance and consulting rate guides (e.g. the time-tracking industry's own published rate calculators): figure out how much revenue you need in a year, then divide by the hours you can actually bill for.

Gross up for tax. Desired take-home ÷ (1 − tax rate) = income you need before tax.
Add overhead. Income before tax + annual business overhead = total revenue needed.
Find billable hours. Working weeks × hours per week × billable share = annual billable hours.
Divide. Total revenue needed ÷ annual billable hours = target hourly rate.

Two things are estimates, not verified constants, and are left in your hands rather than hard-coded: your real effective tax rate (depends on province, structure, and deductions), and the share of your time that's genuinely billable (varies enormously by freelancer). Adjust both to match your own numbers.