For freelancers and agencies pricing their own work.
Be honest. Almost nobody bills 40. Sales calls, invoicing, revisions you absorbed, and learning are all unbilled.
Your minimum hourly rate
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This is the floor to hit your target — not an aspiration. Price projects at this rate times realistic hours, then add a margin for the revisions you know are coming.
Get an exact quoteNo email needed to see the number above.
Most freelancers price by guessing what the client will accept, then discover at the end of the year that they earned less than a salary. The arithmetic below is unglamorous and usually uncomfortable.
The key number nobody accounts for is billable ratio. You do not bill 40 hours a week — you bill perhaps 20–25 after sales, admin, invoicing, and the work you redo for free. Pricing as if every hour is billable is the single most common reason freelance income disappoints.
Quote fixed price to the client, calculate it from your hourly rate internally. Clients strongly prefer knowing the number, and fixed pricing rewards you for getting faster rather than punishing you for it. Use the hourly figure to check whether a fixed quote is actually worth taking.
Probably not — it usually looks high because most freelancers are underpricing and that becomes the reference point. Work backwards instead: if you bill 20 hours a week for 46 weeks, that is 920 billable hours a year to cover your income, costs, and tax. The arithmetic is unforgiving.
Give notice, apply it to new work rather than retroactively, and do not apologise or over-explain. Some will leave; the ones who leave over a reasonable increase are usually the ones consuming the most unbilled time.
Some should say that — not every client is your client. If everyone says it, the problem is usually positioning rather than price: you are being compared against marketplace freelancers because nothing on your site explains why you are different.
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