← Blogby Marcell Almeida

How to set your freelance hourly rate

Target annual income → hourly rate that accounts for non-billable time and overhead.

Employees get paid for 2,080 hours; contractors bill far fewer. The Contractor Rate Calculator backs into an hourly rate from your salary goal, billable percentage, and expense buffer.

Try it — desired salary, billable hours, expenses

Open full tool →

How it works

  1. Target annual income — take-home or gross goal.
  2. Billable hours — realistic client-facing hours per year.
  3. Overhead — taxes, insurance, software, unpaid admin time.

Billable vs total hours

Most freelancers bill 60–80% of working hours. The rest is sales, invoicing, and learning — you still need to earn during those hours indirectly.

Product pricing

For physical goods, use the Pricing Calculator for markup and margin.

The How to set your freelance hourly rate is free, runs locally, and never sends your data to a server. More business calculators at maratool.com.