Freelance Hourly Rate Calculator

How this calculator works

The calculator works backwards from the money you actually want to keep. First it grosses your target take-home up for taxes: if you want to keep a given amount after an effective tax rate, your profit before tax must be take-home ÷ (1 − tax rate). Business expenses are then added on top, on the assumption that they are deductible — you need to earn them, but you do not pay income tax on them.

On the hours side, it multiplies your billable hours per week by your working weeks (52 minus weeks off). Dividing required revenue by billable hours gives your break-even rate; quoting below it means missing your income target. The recommended quote adds a 15% buffer for the realities of freelancing: scope creep, payment delays, currency swings and quiet months.

Because tax regimes differ enormously — a freelancer under Portugal’s simplified regime, a Georgia small-business-status holder at 1% and a Dubai resident at 0% face completely different math — this tool takes your effective rate as an input. Our country-specific tax calculators estimate that number for you; use them first if you are unsure, then bring the effective rate back here.

A worked example

Take the defaults: a target take-home of 60,000, an effective tax rate of 25%, 4,000 of annual expenses, 25 billable hours a week and five weeks off. Grossing up for tax gives 60,000 ÷ 0.75 = 80,000; adding expenses makes 84,000 of required revenue. On the hours side, 25 × 47 weeks = 1,175 billable hours. The break-even rate is therefore 84,000 ÷ 1,175 ≈ 71 an hour, and the recommended quote with the 15% buffer is about 82.

The naive conversion — 60,000 ÷ 2,080 — gives 29. That divisor is an employee convention: 52 weeks of 40 paid hours (the U.S. federal payroll rule refines it to 2,087 to average out leap years). It assumes every hour is paid and that taxes, benefits and equipment are someone else’s cost. For a freelancer none of that holds, which is why the honest number is roughly 2.5× the naive one in this example, and rarely less than 1.5× in any realistic one.

Where to get your effective tax rate

The tax-rate field is the input that moves the result most, and the one people guess at. Enter an effective rate — income tax plus mandatory social contributions, divided by profit — not a headline bracket. Our country calculators produce exactly that figure from official 2026 rules: the Portugal simplified-regime calculator, the Spain autónomo calculator, the Netherlands ZZP calculator, the Canada self-employed calculator, the Georgia small-business calculator and the Dubai take-home calculator. Run one at your expected profit, read off the effective rate, and bring it back here. To see the same profit under several regimes side by side, use the net income comparison.

Whatever the country, remember that a self-employed person carries both halves of social contributions. In the United States that is the 15.3% self-employment tax; in Spain it is the monthly autónomo quota; in the Netherlands it is the Zvw contribution on top of box 1 tax. Our comparison of freelancer social security contributions shows how large that line is in each system. If your rate leaves it out, your quote is too low.

Adjusting the rate for where you live

The take-home you type in should be the amount that funds your actual life, and that depends on prices as much as on tax. A freelancer relocating from Lisbon to Amsterdam needs a higher take-home to stand still, and a lower one moving the other way. The cost-of-living salary converter translates a target between cities so the first field reflects the place you will be paying rent, and the real-terms take-home guide explains why a lower tax rate can still leave you worse off once prices are counted.