Freelance hourly rate calculator

Work backwards from the income you want: add your business costs and the share you set aside for taxes, divide by the hours you can actually bill, and get the rate you need to charge.

✓ TestedPlain arithmetic, shown step by step · not tax advice

Charge at least–

Revenue you need per year
of which: tax set-aside
of which: business costs
of which: take-home
Billable hours per year

The formula

revenue needed = (take-home + business costs) ÷ (1 − tax share)
hourly rate    = revenue needed ÷ (working weeks × billable hours per week)

The tax set-aside is a share of revenue, which is why it divides rather than adds. With the defaults: ($60,000 + $6,000) ÷ 0.75 = $88,000 of revenue over 1,150 billable hours, or $76.52 an hour.