Professional Rate Calculator
Make informed decisions about your pricing strategy. Our calculator helps you determine competitive rates based on your experience, market position, and business costs.
Built for freelancers, consultants, and agencies. For more utilities, explore the full tools catalog.
This helps us benchmark against market rates
Understanding Your Rates
How We Calculate Your Rates
We start with your target annual income and work backwards to determine competitive rates that account for non-billable time, vacation, and various project factors. The goal is to ensure you're charging enough to meet your income goals while staying competitive in your market.
The Basics
Available Hours
We take your preferred weekly hours and multiply them by 48 weeks (assuming 4 weeks for vacation and unexpected gaps). This gives us your actual billable hours per year.
Overhead Time
We apply a 1.4x multiplier to account for non-billable activities like admin, marketing, and business development. This means if you need $100/hr to meet your target, you should charge $140/hr to account for unbillable time.
Adjustment Factors
Your base rate gets adjusted based on four key factors that affect the value and effort of your work:
Project Complexity
Timeline Urgency
Client Type
Engagement Length
Reality Check
We compare your target income with what you'd earn in a full-time role to assess how achievable your goals are:
Easily achievable with standard rates
Achievable with good positioning
Requires strong strategy and positioning
Needs exceptional value proposition
Example
Starting Point
- • Target Income: $120,000/year
- • Working 40 hours/week
- • 4 weeks buffer time
Calculation
- 1. Available Hours = 40 hrs × 48 weeks = 1,920 hrs/year
- 2. Base Rate = ($120,000 ÷ 1,920) × 1.4 = $87.50/hr
- 3. Final Rates (rounded for professionalism):
- • Hourly: $90
- • Daily: $720
- • Weekly: $3,600
Remember
These calculations provide a solid starting point, but you should adjust your final rates based on your unique circumstances, market conditions, and client relationships. The key is to find rates that are both sustainable for your business and valuable to your clients.
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