How much should you charge as a freelancer?
How much should I charge as a freelancer? It is the question every independent worker asks, and the honest answer is not a number: it is what you need to take home, after taxes and expenses, divided by the hours a client actually pays for. Fill in the seven lines on this work-order slip and it quotes your minimum hourly rate, the revenue that rate protects, and a rate card you can copy.
Tool № 3 · Monday, September 21, 2026 · free, always
A rate that survives taxes in April is set in September.
Rate slip · form FR-3
Estimates only. These figures are estimates for illustration only and are not tax or financial advice. All figures are USD.
How the math works
Hours first. Subtract your weeks off from 52, multiply by 5 days, your billable hours per day, and the share of hours a client pays for. These are the only hours that earn:
billable hours = (52 − weeks off) × 5 × hours per day × billability
Then the money, backwards. Add expenses to your take-home target, then divide by what the tax rate leaves. That is the gross you must earn before a dollar of profit:
gross = (take-home + expenses) ÷ (1 − tax rate)
Then the cushion. Add your profit margin, and divide by your billable hours. The rate rounds up to whole dollars, because a freelancer should never round against themselves:
rate = ceiling( gross × (1 + margin) ÷ billable hours )
With the defaults: (52 − 2) × 5 × 6 × 75% = 1,125 billable hours; ($60,000 + $3,000) ÷ 0.75 = $84,000; $84,000 × 1.10 = $92,400; ceiling($92,400 ÷ 1,125) = $83/hr, about $7,700 a month.
Common questions
How much should I charge as a freelancer?
Fill in all seven lines: what you want to take home, your rough tax rate, expenses, weeks off, billable hours per day, billability, and a profit cushion. The slip works backwards: it adds expenses, divides by (1 minus your tax rate) to cover taxes, adds your margin, then divides by your real billable hours and rounds up to whole dollars. The stamped number is the floor: charge at least this much.
How does the tax estimate work?
It treats your tax number as one combined rate, rough on purpose. Gross needed = (take-home + expenses) divided by (1 minus the tax rate). With the defaults: $63,000 ÷ 0.75 = $84,000. Set the rate to 100% or more and the slip stops: a 100% tax rate leaves nothing to take home, so it asks you to lower it.
Why does billability move my rate so much?
Only hours a client pays for count. At 6 billable hours a day, 50 working weeks, and 75% billability, that is 1,125 paid hours. The rate is revenue divided by billable hours, rounded up, so every unbilled hour pushes the rate up. Drop billability to zero and the slip refuses: with zero billable hours there is no rate to compute.
Can this calculator quote a whole project?
No. This slip sets your hourly floor; quoting a project means scoping the work, and this page does not do that. Use the minimum rate here as the floor when you price a project yourself.
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