Freelance Rate

Plan a rate from your own annual budget and available billable time. All amounts use the same currency. Overhead and fee rates are entered before VAT; this tool does not calculate VAT, currency conversion or country-specific taxes.

Personal gross need = net take-home target / (1 − estimated deductions). The deduction percentage is a flat estimate supplied by you, not a marginal tax rate. Overhead is then added as a business expense before personal deductions in this simplified model. It is not grossed up a second time.

The revenue reserve is an extra share of final revenue before any further personal deductions. Annual revenue = (personal gross need + overhead) / (1 − reserve share). A 20% reserve on a budget of 1000 needs 1250 revenue, leaving 250; this is not a 20% markup giving 1200. It is a planning reserve, not a statutory accounting profit margin or guaranteed after-tax profit.

Billable hours/year = weeks worked × working hours/week × billable percentage. Exclude holidays and time off through working weeks; apply the billable percentage once for administration, acquisition and other unpaid work within those weeks. Do not subtract either category again. Hourly rate = annual revenue / billable hours; daily rate = hourly rate × chosen day-rate hours. This day length is an equivalent, not a calendar schedule.

The breakdown shows the gross-up, pre-reserve budget, reserve, weekly billable hours and revenue equivalents. Revenue per working week uses the weeks entered; monthly average uses 12 months. For example, 1200 annual budget and 100 billable hours need 12/hour. Amounts are rounded for display; quote rounding and actual tax treatment remain outside this model. No market-demand, workload or income guarantee.

Finite nonnegative income/overhead; deductions/reserve from 0% to below 100%; positive weeks up to 52, hours/week up to 168, day-rate hours up to 24 and billable share up to 100%. Fractions are allowed. Unrepresentable inputs/results produce errors; very small nonzero values use scientific notation.

Cost/time context: IHK Munich: price calculation.

All eight raw inputs remain on this browser, including empty or invalid values. Reset restores the example and closes the breakdown. Results are recalculated and never saved; the open breakdown is not saved either.