Start from the life you want to fund — and get the hourly and day rate that actually pays for it.
Rule of thumb check: freelancers typically need 1.5–2× the equivalent employee hourly wage to break even on benefits, downtime and overhead.
Employees sell about 2,080 hours a year and keep benefits, equipment, sick days and slow weeks on the employer's tab. Freelancers fund all of that from billable time — and billable time is scarcer than it looks. After sales calls, proposals, admin, invoicing (faster with this, incidentally), learning, holidays and the gaps between projects, most full-time freelancers genuinely bill 120–180 days a year, at perhaps 5–6 focused billable hours per day. Pricing as if all 260 weekdays sell is how talented people end up underwater.
It works backwards from take-home pay. Taxes apply to profit (revenue minus expenses), so: gross revenue = target net ÷ (1 − tax rate) + expenses. Divide by billable days for the day rate, and by billable hours for the hourly rate. Example: to net 80,000 at a 25% effective tax rate with 8,000 of annual expenses, you must invoice 114,667. At 180 billable days that's a 637 day rate; at 6 billable hours a day, 106 an hour — far from the 38/hour the naive salary division suggests.
This number is your break-even for the life you want — charge below it knowingly or not at all. Actual pricing can and often should sit above it: scarce skills, urgent timelines and value-based projects command premiums. And quote day rates where you can; days resist the death-by-fifteen-minute-increments that hourly billing invites.
Most established full-time freelancers genuinely bill 120–180 days a year once holidays, admin, sales and gaps are subtracted. New freelancers should assume the low end.
Because tax is charged on your profit. To keep a target amount after tax, your pre-tax profit must be target ÷ (1 − rate); expenses are then added on top to get required revenue.
Day rates suit project work and avoid timesheet nickel-and-diming; hourly suits open-ended or support work. This calculator gives you both from the same inputs.
No — it is pure arithmetic. Enter your local effective tax rate (including any self-employment contributions) and the result is valid anywhere, in any currency.