Home | Calculators | Freelance Pricing | Business Metrics
Calculate your real effective hourly rate after accounting for business expenses and expected billable hours. This helps freelancers, consultants, and contractors understand what they actually earn for each billable hour worked.
Your posted rate is not always your real rate. Expenses, unpaid time, admin work, and limited billable hours can reduce what you actually keep from each hour of paid work.
Your effective hourly rate is what your income looks like after expenses are accounted for and spread across your billable hours.
For example, if you want $100,000 in annual income, have $20,000 in annual business expenses, and expect 1,200 billable hours, your effective hourly rate is based on what remains after expenses divided by those billable hours.
Freelancers often look only at the rate they charge clients. But your client-facing rate is not the same as your effective rate after business costs and non-billable time.
If your expenses are high or your billable hours are limited, your effective hourly rate may be lower than expected. That can affect whether your pricing is sustainable.
Your effective rate depends heavily on how many hours you can actually bill. If you work 40 hours per week but only bill 20 to 25 of those hours, your pricing needs to account for the unpaid time that keeps the business running.
Use the Billable Hours Calculator or Billable Utilization Calculator to estimate your realistic billable capacity.
Enter your target annual income, estimated annual business expenses, and expected billable hours per year. The calculator subtracts expenses from your income target and divides the result by your billable hours.
Use the result as a planning number when checking whether your freelance hourly rate, consulting day rate, or project pricing is high enough.
Billable time affects your freelance rate, client capacity, and income planning. These tools help you estimate how much of your working time actually produces revenue and how that time connects to your pricing.