Freelance Rate Calculator
Most calculators divide your target salary by 2,000 hours and call it done. That math is how freelancers quietly go broke. This one starts from the pay you want to keep, then adds back tax, the weeks you take off, and every hour you can't put on an invoice. What you get is a number you can charge and still cover the rent.
Your situation
The money you actually want to keep after tax and business costs.
Software, hardware, coworking, marketing, subscriptions.
Health insurance, retirement or pension you pay yourself.
Your blended tax on profit. Gulf regions default to 0% (no personal income tax).
Holidays, sick days, slow weeks. Nobody pays these when you work for yourself.
The share of your hours you can actually put on an invoice. For most people it's a little over half.
A little extra on top for slow months and growth. Optional.
Day rate assumes 8 billable hours. Monthly is what you need to invoice, split over 12.
Roughly 198% more than the quick guess.
Charge the quick number and the gap comes out of your pocket, one unpaid hour at a time.
The math runs in your browser. Nothing you type here gets sent anywhere or saved.
How your freelance rate is calculated
The trick is to start at the finish line. Instead of picking an hourly number and praying it stretches far enough, you begin with the pay you want to keep and work back to the rate that gets you there. Five short steps.
- 1
Start with your take-home pay
Not revenue. Not a salary you saw in a job ad. The money you want left once every bill is paid.
- 2
Add what you now cover yourself
Your business costs, plus the health cover and pension a boss used to pick up. All of it comes out of your rate now.
- 3
Build the tax back in
Gross the number up by your tax rate, so what actually lands in your account still matches step one.
- 4
Keep only the hours you can sell
Strip out your time off, then count just the slice of the week you invoice. For most people that runs a little over half.
- 5
Spread the total across those hours
Divide what you need to earn by the hours you can bill. There's your real hourly rate. The day and month fall out of it.
Why so many freelancers charge too little
It's rarely the rate itself that hurts. It's everything the rate has to quietly pay for, the stuff you never noticed back when a company took care of it.
You don't bill 40 hours
Chasing leads, writing proposals, sending invoices. A big slice of the week earns nothing, and only the billable part pays.
Nobody pays you to rest
Every holiday, sick day and quiet week is income you didn't make. There's no paid leave when the business is you.
Your benefits are on you now
Health cover, a pension, the laptop you're reading this on. That used to be someone else's line item.
Tax hits harder than payroll
Self-employment tax has a habit of blindsiding people in year one. Price for it before it shows up.
Rates aren't the same everywhere
Where you live and where your clients pay from both move the numbers, mostly through tax and the currency you get paid in.
US, UK, Europe, Canada, Australia
Higher rates, though tax and living costs climb to meet them. Somewhere between a quarter and a third going to tax is a fair opening guess.
The Gulf: Saudi Arabia and the UAE
There's no income tax on individuals, so more of what you charge stays with you. The calculator sets these to zero by default.
Egypt and the rest of MENA
Bill in your own currency if you want. But when your clients are overseas, you can often charge much closer to what they'd pay a local. Switch regions and watch it move.
Frequently asked questions
Got your number? Go win the work.
NovaDraft takes the rate you just worked out and drops it straight into a proposal and an invoice, so you can quote a client today instead of rebuilding a spreadsheet.