Freelance Rate Calculator: The Hourly Rate That Pays You
A freelance rate has to cover more than a salary does: both halves of Social Security and Medicare, every hour you work but cannot bill, your own unpaid time off, and your overhead. The calculator above works backwards from the take-home pay you want to the hourly rate that produces it, using real 2026 tax figures instead of a rule-of-thumb markup.
To take home $70,000 while billing 25 hours a week for 46 weeks with $6,000 of overhead, you need $95,016 of revenue — an hourly rate of $82.62, or $661 a day.
Freelance Rate calculators
How it works
Most freelancers price their work by taking a salary they would accept and dividing by 2,080 hours. That produces a rate that quietly loses money, for two separate reasons.
The first is utilization. Nobody bills every hour they work. Proposals, invoicing, bookkeeping, client calls that never convert, and unpaid revisions are all real work that no client pays for. A solo freelancer typically bills between 50% and 70% of their working hours. Billing 25 of a 40-hour week is 62.5% utilization, which means your billable rate has to carry the other 37.5% of your time.
The second is that a 1099 earner is their own employer. You pay the full 15.3% self-employment tax rather than the 7.65% an employee sees, you buy your own time off, and you fund your own equipment, software, and insurance. Those are not overheads you can decline; they are the cost of the arrangement.
So the calculator does not apply a markup. It solves for the gross revenue at which take-home — after your overhead, your actual self-employment tax, and your actual federal income tax — equals your target, then divides that revenue by the hours you can genuinely bill.
The result reproduces the folk wisdom about doubling your rate, but from arithmetic rather than superstition. At the example above, an employee taking home the same $70,000 earns about $86,951, which is $41.80 an hour across a standard 2,080-hour year. The freelance rate that matches it is $82.62 — 2.0 times the employee's hourly figure. The multiple is not greed. It is unbillable time, both FICA halves, unpaid leave, and overhead, priced honestly.
Two things the calculator deliberately leaves out, both of which push your real number higher: state and local income tax, and health insurance. An employee's premium is usually subsidised by their employer and paid with pre-tax dollars; a freelancer buys the whole thing. Add both to your overhead before you quote.
One last framing note. This gives you a floor, not a price. The rate that covers your costs is the rate below which work is not worth taking. What clients will actually pay depends on the value of the outcome, and pricing by project rather than by hour is often the better move once you can estimate your own delivery time reliably.
Frequently asked questions
How do I calculate my freelance hourly rate?
Work backwards from take-home pay, not forwards from a salary. Start with the annual take-home you want, add your business overhead, add the federal self-employment and income tax on that profit, and divide the total by the hours you can genuinely bill — which is your working hours times your utilization rate, not 2,080. The calculator above does this with 2026 tax figures: $70,000 of take-home at 25 billable hours a week for 46 weeks needs $95,016 of revenue and an $82.62 hourly rate.
Should a freelancer charge double what an employee earns hourly?
Roughly, yes, and it is arithmetic rather than a rule of thumb. In the example above, an employee taking home the same $70,000 earns about $41.80 an hour across a full 2,080-hour year, while the freelance rate needed to match it is $82.62 — very close to 2×. The doubling comes from three places: hours you work but cannot bill, the employer half of Social Security and Medicare, and unpaid time off plus overhead. Your own multiple depends mostly on your utilization rate.
What is a realistic billable utilization rate?
Between 50% and 70% for most solo freelancers. Everything that is not client work — pitching, invoicing, admin, bookkeeping, marketing, unpaid revisions — comes out of the same week. Assuming higher than 70% is the most common way a rate calculation goes wrong, because it silently prices your admin time at zero. If you are new, model 50% until you have a few months of tracked hours to check it against.
How many weeks a year should I plan to work?
Between 45 and 48 for most freelancers. A salaried employee gets paid for holidays, vacation, and sick days; you do not. Subtract the weeks you actually intend to take off, and subtract time for illness you cannot predict. Planning on 52 weeks makes every rate you quote about 12% too low, and it turns any time off into an unfunded pay cut.
Should I charge hourly or by project?
Hourly is the safer way to start, because it prices scope changes automatically and needs no estimating skill. Project pricing pays better once you can predict your own delivery time, since it decouples your income from your hours and rewards getting faster. Either way the hourly figure matters: it is the floor you check any project quote against. Divide the fee by your realistic hours and, if the result is under your rate, the project is priced below cost.
Does this include state taxes and health insurance?
No — and both push the rate you need higher. The calculator models federal self-employment and income tax only. State and local income tax adds anywhere from nothing to over 10% depending on where you live. Health insurance is the larger gap for most people: an employee's premium is typically subsidised by their employer, while a freelancer pays the entire cost. Add your annual premium to the overhead field to see the real number.
Sources
We prioritize primary sources for rules, formulas, rates, limits, and definitions. See our calculator methodology and editorial policy.