Freelance Hourly Rate & Project Price (After Tax & Utilization)

The Freelance Hourly Rate & Project Price calculator converts your annual target income into a practical hourly rate that already accounts for taxes, expenses, holidays, and non-billable time. Instead of guessing, you set an income goal, add your yearly business costs, and choose an effective tax percent. The tool grosses up your revenue target so you cover taxes and still take home your target. It then spreads that revenue across the hours you can realistically bill after holidays and admin time, producing a base hourly number, a day rate for flat bookings, and a buffered project price based on your estimated hours.

Start with your real revenue need. Required revenue must cover your take-home pay, business expenses, and taxes. That is why the calculator divides by one minus your tax percent instead of just adding it at the end. If you are unsure of your effective tax rate, begin with a conservative estimate and refine after a quarter of invoices and bookkeeping.

Be honest about working patterns. Weeks off include public holidays, vacation, illness, and slow periods. Hours per day should reflect sustainable effort, not heroic sprints. Utilization percent captures how much of your workday actually bills clients after marketing, sales, bookkeeping, meetings, and learning. Many solo pros land between fifty and seventy percent in steady months.

Price projects with a safety buffer. Even with tight scopes, requirements drift and reviews add cycles. A buffer percent on the project total builds in contingency and reduces awkward change orders. If a client needs a hard cap, keep the buffer inside your price and protect scope in writing. When uncertainty is high, quote a range and anchor the initial phase with a smaller fixed block.

Round to clean numbers. Once you see the base hourly and day rate, round up to friendly steps (for example nearest five or ten) and stick to them across clients. Consistent rates reduce friction and make it easier to quote quickly from your estimate of hours.

Practical tweaks to improve margins. Raise utilization by batching meetings, using an intake form, and templating proposals. Trim expenses that do not support delivery quality. Track actual hours by phase to improve future estimates and adjust your buffer. If demand is strong, increase day rate first; clients feel day-rate changes less than hourly shifts for the same scope.

This calculator is educational and offline. It does not fetch tax rules or accounting data. Always confirm your own effective tax rate and expense plan with a professional and update the fields here when your situation changes.

Let Y be your target personal income and E your annual business expenses. With an effective tax rate t, the required revenue R is (Y + E) ÷ (1 − t). With weeks off w, workdays d, and hours per day h, annual working hours H = (52 − w) × d × h. Billable hours B = H × u where u is utilization. Base hourly r = R ÷ B. Day rate = r × h. A project with q billable hours has a base price r × q; with buffer b the price becomes r × q × (1 + b). These simple relations keep your pricing disciplined and transparent.