Stop guessing what to charge. This tool is for freelancers, contractors, and anyone pricing client work: enter your income goal, your business expenses, and how many hours you can actually bill — and it calculates the hourly rate you need to charge to hit that goal. Unlike market-average estimators, this planner uses your numbers, and it is tax-agnostic: you enter your own after-tax retention percentage because no tool can know your tax situation for you. The result is a planning estimate, not tax or financial advice.
Privacy: this tool runs entirely in your browser. It makes no network requests and has no backend. Nothing you type is uploaded. Closing the page discards it.
What you want to keep after tax each year. The default 60,000 is illustrative — enter your own goal.
Software, equipment, insurance, accounting, and similar yearly costs. The default 6,000 is illustrative.
Your own estimate — this tool does not know your tax situation and does not guess it. If you keep about three quarters of what you bill, enter 75. The default 75% is illustrative.
Hours you can actually charge to clients, not total hours worked. The default 30 is illustrative.
52 minus holidays, sick days, and non-billable time. The default 46 is illustrative.
No result yet — enter your numbers above and choose Calculate my rate.
| Billable hrs / week | Hourly rate |
|---|---|
| Run the calculation to see the sensitivity table. | |
You tell the tool what you want to keep each year, what your business costs, what share of billed revenue survives tax (your own estimate), and how many hours you can actually bill. It then works backwards: (income goal + overhead) ÷ your retention percentage = the revenue you must bill before tax; divided by your annual billable hours = the hourly rate that gets you there. Personal numbers beat market averages — a market estimator can tell you what designers "typically" charge, but it does not know your rent, your costs, or your tax rate. This planner does not guess any of that: it uses only what you enter.
Illustrative example: $60,000 take-home goal, $6,000 overhead, 75% retention, 30 billable hours per week, 46 billable weeks per year. Required pre-tax revenue = (60,000 + 6,000) ÷ 0.75 = $88,000; annual billable hours = 30 × 46 = 1,380; hourly rate = 88,000 ÷ 1,380 = $63.77/hr; day rate = $510.16. Drop to 20 billable hours a week and the same goal needs $95.65/hr — that is the price of unbillable time, made visible.
Preset answers only. This helper is not a live assistant and cannot answer free-form questions. There is no chat box, and nothing you enter on this site is sent anywhere by this helper.