Most freelancers undercharge because they price off a salary instead of their real costs. Enter what you want to take home, your expenses, and the hours you can actually bill — this works out the rate that gets you there.
Your rate has to cover three things people forget: your expenses, the taxes you owe on what you bill, and the simple fact that you can't bill 40 hours a week — admin, sales, and breaks eat into it. The formula:
rate = (take-home + expenses) ÷ (1 − tax%) ÷ (billable hours per week × working weeks)
Treat the result as your floor, not your ceiling — raise it for rush work, specialized skills, or difficult clients.
Because you pay your own taxes, benefits, software, and downtime. A freelancer charging $75/hour is not taking home $75/hour — after expenses and taxes it's far less, which is exactly what this calculator corrects for.
Most full-time freelancers bill 20–30 hours a week, not 40. The rest goes to finding clients, invoicing, email, and rest. Use a realistic number here or your rate will come out too low.
GigPaper turns your rate into a clean invoice your client pays by link — no account, 0% taken. 30 days free.
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