Key takeaways
- Start with the income and costs the business must support.
- Remove leave, admin and other non-billable capacity.
- Use utilisation honestly; not every working day is saleable.
- Treat the result as a floor, then price for scope, risk and value.
A sustainable freelance rate must cover personal pay, business costs, savings or pension provision, tax contingency and time that cannot be billed. This calculator works back from those inputs and shows a planning floor; it does not estimate your tax liability.
Private, local calculation
Your rate floor
Nothing is stored or sent. The estimate grosses up income, costs and savings for the selected contingency, then divides by realistically billable time.
The formula
Revenue target = (personal pay + business costs + pension or savings allowance) ÷ (1 − tax contingency). Billable days = (260 weekdays − leave − other non-billable days) × utilisation. Day rate = revenue target ÷ billable days. Hourly rate = day rate ÷ billable hours per day.
The contingency is deliberately simple. It is a planning buffer, not a prediction of tax. Your actual position depends on profit, structure, allowable expenses and personal circumstances.
Worked hypothetical example
Hypothetical: A freelancer wants £42,000 personal pay, expects £6,500 of annual costs and allows £3,500 for pension or savings. A 25% contingency creates a £69,333 revenue target. After 25 days of leave and 35 days for sickness, admin and training, 200 working days remain. At 70% utilisation that becomes 140 billable days, producing a floor of about £495 per day or £71 per hour over seven billable hours.
How to use the three bands
- Lean: useful for a deliberately reduced scope or especially efficient repeat engagement, but risky as a default.
- Floor: the modelled minimum under the assumptions entered.
- Resilient: adds room for uncertainty, negotiation, overruns and reinvestment.
Do not quote a rate without defining what it buys. A fixed project price also needs scope, change control, client dependencies and the risk of rework. Revisit the inputs quarterly and after a meaningful change in cost or capacity.
Sources
Sources were checked on 7 September 2026. External information can change.
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