Freelance Rate Calculator

This calculator works backward from the income you actually want to keep, not from a guessed hourly number. Start with a desired annual salary, then add self-employment tax, health insurance, retirement contributions, and business expenses — all the costs a traditional paycheck already has covered before it reaches an employee — and layer a profit margin on top so the business itself has room to grow rather than just break even. That total is divided by realistic annual billable hours, which is deliberately not a 40-hour week times 52: weeks off accounts for vacation and sick time, and billable hours per week should already exclude the marketing, invoicing, and admin time clients never pay for.

The result is a floor, not a target — the minimum you need to charge to replicate a comparable salary once every freelance-specific cost is covered, expressed as hourly, daily, and weekly rates plus the monthly and annual revenue needed to hit it. Two simplifications matter: self-employment tax defaults to the flat 15.3% rate rather than modeling the Social Security wage-base cap that kicks in at very high income, and no state or federal income tax is subtracted from the desired salary itself, since that figure represents the take-home pay being solved for. Treat the output as a starting point and check it against what comparable freelancers charge in your specialty and market.