What should you charge?
A worksheet, not a guess: put in the pay you want, what the business costs to run, and the hours you can actually bill — get back an hourly rate and a day rate that hold up. Updates live as you type. No signup, nothing saved, nothing sent anywhere.
Runs entirely in your browser — the client names and amounts you type here are never sent to us, never stored on our side, and gone when you close the tab. Why we can say that →
Rate calculator
You’re billing 25 of 40 hours worked a week — that’s 63% utilization (assuming a standard 40-hour work week).
Got a rate you trust? Put it on a bill with the free invoice generator, price a whole job (not just your hours) with the markup & margin calculator, work out what a late payment would cost with the late fee calculator, or see all free tools.
How this number is worked out
Four steps, run in order every time you change a number: gross your take-home pay up for the tax and set-aside you’ll owe on it, add your annual overhead on top, then add a margin buffer for the weeks that don’t go to plan. Divide that total by the hours you can actually invoice in a year, and what’s left is an hourly rate you can defend — not a number that “feels about right.”
The same four-part logic — cost, labor, overhead, margin — runs through how to price a job so the number holds up; this calculator is that method applied to your own pay instead of a single job.
Why “billable” hours, not “worked” hours
A 40-hour week rarely means 40 billable hours. Quoting, driving, admin, invoicing, and marketing all take real time, but none of it lands on an invoice — so the hours you do bill have to carry the cost of the hours you don’t. That’s the utilization line above: it’s not a criticism of your week, it’s the reason the rate has to be higher than a naive “salary ÷ hours worked” guess.
What counts as overhead
Anything the business spends whether or not a given job happens: software subscriptions, insurance, a vehicle, tools, a phone bill, and materials that never made it onto an invoice. None of it shows up if you stop at “pay plus hours” — which is exactly how a rate that looked fine on paper quietly stops covering its own costs.
Once you’ve got a rate you trust, put it to work: how to price a job so the number holds up covers materials and margin per job, and how to write a quote that wins the work covers turning that rate into a quote a client signs.
Common questions
How do I work out my hourly rate?
Start with the take-home pay you actually want for the year, gross it up for tax and set-aside, add your annual overhead (software, insurance, vehicle, tools), then add a margin buffer on top for the slow weeks and the unexpected. Divide that total by the hours you can actually bill in a year — not the hours you work, the hours you invoice — and that’s your hourly rate.
What’s a good profit margin to build in?
Most trades build in 15–30% on top of true cost, depending on how predictable the work is. A job you’ve done a hundred times can carry less margin than one with a lot of unknowns — see how to price a job for the full breakdown.
Why is my rate higher than what I’d charge per hour worked?
Because “billable hours” and “hours worked” aren’t the same number. Admin, quoting, driving, and marketing all take real time but don’t get invoiced — so the hours you can bill have to cover the pay and overhead of every hour you can’t.
Want this rate to run the whole binder?
BizBinder turns a rate you trust into quotes, invoices, and reminders that send themselves — so the number this calculator gave you shows up on every job automatically.
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