Freelance Hourly Rate Calculator
Work backward from the take-home pay you want to the hourly rate you must bill, covering self-employment tax, income tax, expenses, and non-billable time.
Freelance Hourly Rate Calculator
Target Annual Take-Home
The net cash you want in your pocket after self-employment tax and income tax.
Annual Business Expenses
Software, equipment, insurance, coworking, accounting, and other costs of running the business.
Billable Hours Per Week
Only the hours you can invoice, not the hours you work. Most freelancers bill 50% to 65% of their time.
Weeks Worked Per Year
Effective Income Tax Rate
Enter a blended effective rate (total income tax divided by taxable income), not your top bracket. Use 0 for a state with no income tax.
Profit / Safety Buffer
A cushion added on top of the break-even rate for slow periods, non-payment, and margin.
The load percentage is the share of every invoiced dollar that never reaches your take-home: self-employment tax, income tax, expenses, and buffer combined.
Estimates only, not tax or legal advice. The income tax portion uses one flat effective rate you supply, not progressive brackets, and the 0.9% Additional Medicare Tax and QBI deduction are not modeled. Consult a tax professional for your situation.
Track Every 1099 Gig in One Place
ClockWage44's Hours Tracker logs billable and non-billable time across multiple jobs, marks each income stream taxable or not, and runs its paycheck engine on-device, so you can hold back the right amount from every invoice.
Why freelancers can't just divide their salary by 2,080
A common shortcut is to take a target salary, divide by 2,080 (40 hours times 52 weeks), and call that your hourly rate. It underprices almost everyone. A freelance rate has to cover things a regular paycheck hides. You pay the full 15.3% self-employment tax for Social Security and Medicare instead of splitting it with an employer. You owe income tax on your business profit, federal and state both. And you carry your own expenses plus a big chunk of the week that no client pays for, because admin, sales, and marketing never land on an invoice. Skip all that and the "rate" you settle on quietly funds your clients instead of you.
The formula: working backward from take-home to hourly rate
This tool inverts the usual paycheck flow. Instead of going gross to net, it starts from the net you want and solves for the gross you need. Say you want $70,000 in take-home. The calculator finds the business profit that, after self-employment tax and your effective income tax rate, leaves exactly $70,000. It adds your expenses to get required gross billings, then divides by your annual billable hours (billable hours per week times weeks worked) to get a break-even rate. Apply your buffer and you have the rate to quote. A $70,000 target with modest expenses and part-time billable hours routinely implies a rate far higher than $70,000 divided by 2,080, which is exactly the point.
Self-employment tax, explained simply
Self-employment tax is 15.3%, made up of 12.4% for Social Security and 2.9% for Medicare, and it applies to 92.35% of your net profit rather than the whole amount. The 12.4% Social Security portion stops once your net earnings reach the annual wage base ($184,500 for 2026), while the 2.9% Medicare portion keeps applying to every dollar. You also get to deduct one-half of your self-employment tax before income tax is figured, which this calculator accounts for. If you want to see the self-employment slice on its own, the self-employment tax calculator breaks out each piece.
Billable hours, expenses, and building in a buffer
Two inputs drive the rate more than any other: how many hours you can actually bill and how many weeks you work. Be honest about both. If you bill 25 hours in a working week and take four weeks off, that is 1,200 billable hours a year, not 2,080. Include every real cost in expenses: software, insurance, accounting, coworking, all of it. Then add a buffer of 10% to 20% so a slow month or a late-paying client does not wipe out your margin. If you want to compare your new rate against an equivalent salary, try the hourly to salary calculator or the salary to hourly calculator, and the take-home pay calculator shows the forward gross-to-net view a W-2 worker sees. To keep the underlying hours accurate, download the ClockWage44 app and log billable and non-billable time as you go.
Frequently Asked Questions
Common questions about freelance hourly rate calculator
How do I calculate my freelance hourly rate?
Work backward from the take-home pay you want, not forward from a rate. Add the self-employment tax, income tax, and business expenses you have to cover, then divide that required gross by your billable hours (the hours you can actually invoice), not by every hour you work. This calculator runs that reverse math for you and shows the rate, weekly and monthly billing targets, and the share of each invoiced dollar that never reaches your pocket.
Why is my freelance rate so much higher than my old salary?
A freelance rate has to absorb costs a W-2 wage hides. You pay the full 15.3% self-employment tax instead of splitting Social Security and Medicare with an employer, you fund your own equipment, software, and insurance, and only part of your working week is billable. Once admin, sales, and unpaid time off come out, the rate that matches a given take-home is often well above the old salary divided by 2,080.
How much should I set aside for self-employment tax?
Self-employment tax is 15.3% (12.4% Social Security plus 2.9% Medicare) applied to 92.35% of your net profit, which works out to roughly 14.1% of profit below the Social Security wage base. On top of that you owe federal and state income tax. This calculator bakes the self-employment tax and your effective income tax rate into the required rate. To see the self-employment slice on its own, use the self-employment tax calculator.
What counts as billable vs. non-billable hours?
Billable hours are the hours a client actually pays for. Non-billable hours cover everything that keeps the business running but does not appear on an invoice: prospecting, proposals, admin, bookkeeping, and learning. Most freelancers bill only 50% to 65% of their working time, so entering billable hours (not total hours worked) is what keeps the rate honest.
How many weeks a year should I assume I'll work?
Full-time employees are paid for 52 weeks, but freelancers rarely bill all of them. Once you subtract holidays, sick days, and unpaid time off, 48 to 50 billable weeks is a common planning assumption. Fewer working weeks means each billable hour has to carry more of your annual target, which raises the rate.
Should I charge hourly or a fixed project rate?
The hourly number is a floor, not a mandate. Use it to price fixed-fee work by estimating the billable hours a project needs and multiplying by the rate, then quoting that as a flat amount. The weekly and monthly billing targets shown here help you sanity-check retainers and project quotes against the income you actually need.
What effective tax rate should I enter?
Enter a blended effective rate, meaning total income tax divided by taxable income, not your top marginal bracket. Many freelancers land somewhere between 10% and 22% federal depending on income and deductions, plus their state rate (0% in no-income-tax states). This is a simplification: the tool uses one flat effective rate rather than running progressive brackets, so treat the result as an estimate and refine it with a tax professional.
Does this include income tax as well as self-employment tax?
Yes. The calculator models both the 15.3% self-employment tax on 92.35% of profit and your supplied effective federal plus state income tax rate, and it applies the deduction for one-half of self-employment tax before income tax. The income-tax side uses a flat effective rate rather than tax brackets, which is an intentional simplification, so the figure is an estimate rather than an exact filing.