Freelance Hourly Rate Calculator
Work out the hourly rate you need to hit your target income.
About this calculator
Freelancers routinely underprice themselves by dividing a target salary by full-time hours. That maths ignores three realities: not every working hour is billable, your business has costs, and you fund your own holidays, sick days and pension. This calculator prices those realities in. Enter the income you want to take home, your annual business costs, and a realistic estimate of the hours you can actually bill per week — the answer is the minimum hourly rate that gets you there.
The formula
Worked example
You want £50,000 income, your business costs £5,000 a year, and you can bill 25 hours a week for 46 weeks.
- Billable hours = 25 × 46 = 1,150
- Rate = £55,000 ÷ 1,150 = £47.83/hour
With a 20% buffer for quiet months and bad debts: about £57/hour.
Common mistakes
- Assuming 40 billable hours a week — admin, marketing and proposals typically eat 30–50% of your time.
- Forgetting employer-style costs: pension, insurance, equipment, software, accountant.
- Setting the rate at the break-even number with no margin for quiet periods or late payers.
Frequently asked questions
Assumptions & limitations
Assumes your entered billable hours are genuinely invoiceable and paid. Taxes are not modelled — the target income is treated as gross.
Sources & verification
This calculator applies the standard formula published above to the figures you enter — it relies on no external statutory data. The formula and the worked example were checked by hand against each other.
Spotted an error or an out-of-date figure? Report it — corrections are prioritised over all other work (see our corrections policy).