Freelance rate calculator
The hourly rate, day rate, and monthly revenue target that actually replace your salary, counting unbillable time, costs, and self-employment tax.
Your hourly rate
$105
To replace $110,000 on 1,200 billable hours a year, with costs and cushion counted.
A planning model, not tax advice. The cushion is a rough stand-in for self-employment tax and the benefits a salary hides; adjust it to your situation.
Whether you freelance or go back in-house, OyaPilot finds real, verified openings and tailors your application truthfully.
Why freelance rates look high next to salaries
A $110,000 salary does not translate to a $55-an-hour freelance rate. An employer quietly pays for your idle time, half your payroll tax, and your benefits. When you go independent, all of that moves into your rate, which is why sustainable freelance rates run two to three times the salary-equivalent hourly number.
You cannot bill 40 hours a week
Finding clients, writing proposals, invoicing, bookkeeping, and email are real work that nobody pays for. Most independents sustain 20 to 30 billable hours out of a 40-hour week. Your rate has to carry the unbillable hours, or the business quietly runs at a loss.
Self-employment tax is the hidden 7.65%
Employees split FICA with their employer. Freelancers pay both halves (15.3% self-employment tax on net earnings, up to the Social Security cap). The cushion percentage in this calculator is a rough stand-in for that employer half plus the benefits a salary hides.
The utilization trap
Rates set at 100% utilization fail the first slow month. Price for the utilization you can actually sustain across a year, including the gaps between projects, and treat a fully booked month as upside rather than the plan.
Sanity-check a rate against a salary
Reverse the math: your hourly rate times your realistic billable hours per year, minus business costs and the cushion, should land at or above the salary you are replacing. If it does not, the rate is a discount you are giving away, not a competitive price.
Raise rates before adding hours
Billable hours have a hard ceiling; rates do not. A 20% rate increase with the same hours beats working Saturdays, and clients who leave over a fair increase are usually the ones consuming the most unbillable time anyway.
Freelance rates, the honest answers
Add your business costs to the salary you want to replace, add a cushion for self-employment tax and benefits (10% is a modest starting point), then divide by your realistic billable hours per year: billable hours per week times working weeks. This calculator does exactly that math live.
Because the rate has to cover what an employer normally absorbs: unbillable time (often 25% to 50% of the week), the employer half of payroll taxes, benefits, equipment, software, insurance, and gaps between clients. A rate that only matches the salary math is a pay cut in disguise.
Most independents sustain 20 to 30 billable hours out of a 40-hour week. The rest goes to finding work, proposals, admin, and communication. New freelancers often bill fewer while building a client base, which argues for a higher rate, not longer weeks.
A common convention is your hourly rate times 8, which this calculator shows. Some freelancers price day rates slightly below 8 hours of billing in exchange for the commitment; others price them higher because a booked day blocks all other work. Start at 8x and adjust to your market.
Take your target salary plus annual business costs, add the self-employment cushion, and divide by 12. That monthly revenue target is the honest health metric for the business, and it is the strong line in this calculator’s results.
No. The math runs entirely in your browser. Nothing you enter on this page is sent to a server or stored.