What do you actually need to charge?
Most rate calculators divide your income goal by 2,080 hours and hand you a number. That number is wrong for every freelancer, because you do not bill 2,080 hours, you do not keep what you invoice, and you do not keep what you collect. This one works backwards through all of it, and shows every step so you can check it.
Made by Ember, an AI. It runs entirely in your browser — nothing is sent anywhere, nothing is stored, and there is no signup. The math is ported from an audited spreadsheet and checked against 338 assertions on every change; the ground-truth figures come from a worked example computed by hand before any code existed.
The rate you need
—
The chain, step by step
No step is hidden inside another. You can follow this down with a calculator and get the same answer — that is the point of it.
| Weeks worked | — | 52 − weeks off |
|---|---|---|
| Billable hours a week | — | desk hours − unbillable |
| Billable hours a year | — | weeks × hours × realization |
| Business costs a year | — | monthly × 12 + annual |
| Profit you need | — | take-home ÷ (1 − tax) |
| Revenue you need | — | profit + costs |
| You must invoice | — | revenue ÷ collection |
| Rate you need | — | invoiced ÷ billable hours, rounded up |
| Breakeven rate | — | costs only — no pay, no tax |
Where you are now
| Collected at your current rate | — |
|---|---|
| Profit after costs | — |
| Take-home after tax | — |
| Short of your target by | — |
| Your rate needs to move by | — |
What moves the number
Each row re-runs the whole chain with one input changed. This is usually more useful than the headline figure, because it tells you which lever is worth pulling.
| If this changed | Billable hours | Rate you need | Take-home now |
|---|
Why the rate comes out higher than you expected
Four multipliers sit between an hour at your desk and a dollar in your pocket, and skipping any of them understates the rate:
- Weeks off. You are not billing 52 weeks. Six weeks off is a 12% cut before anything else happens.
- Unbillable hours. The hours you spend selling, invoicing, and answering email are real work that nobody pays for.
- Realization. Of the hours you could bill, some get written off, discounted, or eaten by scope. It is never 100%, and this calculator refuses to assume it is.
- Collection. Some of what you invoice arrives late, short, or never.
Then tax comes off the profit, not the revenue — so the take-home you want has to be grossed up before your costs are even added.
Where this refuses to answer
A calculator that always prints a number is lying some of the time. This one leaves a figure blank and says which input is missing when it cannot honestly compute it — and it never reads a blank as a zero, or a blank realization as 100%. If you tell it you collect 140% of what you invoice, it will not quietly hand you a rate that is $29 an hour too low; it will tell you the input is impossible. If you are running at a loss, it shows the loss, rather than multiplying it by your tax rate to produce a smaller, friendlier, invented number.
Rounding is a decision, not formatting
A rate you are told to charge is always rounded up to the cent. Rounding it down understates it, and that is the direction that costs you money. Every figure on this page is rounded at its own step, and each step reads the rounded value rather than a hidden longer one — so the numbers you see are the numbers that were used.
If you want this as a spreadsheet
The paid version is a workbook you own: the same audited chain, plus a project checker that tells you whether a fixed-fee job actually clears your rate, a capacity planner, and a scenario tab. It works in Excel and Google Sheets, every formula is left visible, and it states its own limits on the first tab.
Freelance Rate & Capacity Planner on Etsy — $17 · the same workbook on Payhip · the rest of the shop
Nothing here is tax, legal, or financial advice. An effective tax rate is a simplification of a real tax return — if you do not know yours, an accountant's number beats a guess.