Freelance Hourly Rate Calculator
The rate every conversion on this page stands on — built from your target income, your costs, your tax estimate and the billable share of your week. If your hourly rate is a guess, start here.
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The Get Paid Kit · Pricing
Free day rate calculator
Every price on this site can be charged by the hour — but clients budget in days, agencies think in days, and sooner or later someone asks for yours. The reflex answer is your hourly rate times eight, and it is true exactly one day in a while: the day all eight hours bill. Your ordinary day holds meetings, admin, task-switching and waiting, and bills fewer of them — five, on the defaults below. So this calculator converts at your shape: $95 an hour across a five-billable-hour day is a $475 day rate, a $2,375 week and a $114,000 year. The $760 that × 8 produces stands beside it, labelled as the fully-billed day, because market day rates are quoted against that day and you need both figures in view to compare honestly. Then it runs the conversion backwards: enter a day rate you have been offered — $600, say — and it reads the offer back into the billable hours it must contain at your rate (6.32) and the hourly it truly pays at your shape ($120.00) and at the market’s ($75.00). The rate calculator and every profession page on this site print the × 8 day — the ceiling, right for a fully client-scheduled day. This page finds the day underneath it: yours. The rules for quoting days live in our guide to day rates explained; this is the arithmetic the rules stand on.
Runs in your browser — nothing you enter is uploaded, sent to a server or stored anywhere except this device. The figures exist only in this page. This is a planning estimate for your own numbers, not financial advice.
Your rate, your day
Where does an honest billable shape come from? Your tracked weeks, not your intentions: the utilization calculator measures the billable share of a real week, and dividing it by your working days gives the shape of your average day. A specific booked day can honestly hold more — that is what the input is for.
Your day, at your shape
— / day
Your quoted day rate — the day rate that keeps your hourly rate whole at the shape on the left.
—The fully-billed day — your rate × 8, the assumption market day rates are quoted against.
—Your week at this shape.
—Your year at this shape.
—Per billable hour, what the offered day rate pays at your shape.
| Hourly rate | — |
| Billable hours in your day | — |
| Your day rate (rate × your billable hours) | — |
| The fully-billed day (rate × 8) | — |
| Working days per week | — |
| Your week | — |
| Working weeks per year | — |
| Your year | — |
| Day rate offered to you | — |
| What it pays per billable hour at your shape | — |
| What it pays per hour at the × 8 assumption | — |
| Billable hours it must contain at your rate | — |
Enter your hourly rate and the billable hours a day really holds, and this line reads the day back to you.
Worked example
The numbers pre-filled in the form above are a complete worked example: a consultant at $95 an hour whose ordinary day bills five hours, working five days a week for 48 weeks — and weighing a $600 day rate a client has put on the table. Enter those numbers above and the calculator returns exactly this:
| Hourly rate | $95 |
| Billable hours in your day | 5 |
| Your day rate ($95 × 5) | $475 |
| The fully-billed day ($95 × 8) | $760 |
| Working days a week | 5 |
| Your week ($475 × 5) | $2,375 |
| Working weeks a year | 48 |
| Your year ($2,375 × 48) | $114,000 |
| The day rate on the table | $600 |
| What it pays per billable hour at your shape ($600 ÷ 5) | $120.00 |
| What it pays per hour at the × 8 assumption ($600 ÷ 8) | $75.00 |
| Billable hours it must contain at your rate ($600 ÷ $95) | 6.32 hours |
Read the $600 both ways, because a client quoting it means one of them. At the market’s eight-hour assumption it pays $75.00 an hour — well under the rate. At your shape it pays $120.00 for each hour you actually bill — well over it. The hours test settles which day is really being bought: $600 equals 6.32 billable hours of your work, so a day that genuinely bills six or more clears your rate, and a day that bills five pays you a premium for the hours it holds — while asking what the other three hours of the day are for.
Now weigh a larger offer. A client says their day rate is $700. At their assumption it pays $87.50 an hour; at your shape, on a day that truly bills five, it pays $140.00; and to keep your $95 whole it must contain 7.37 billable hours of your work. So the question is never “is $700 a good day rate?” — it is “what does the day actually hold?” A workshop day that bills seven hours clears your rate with room to spare. A presence day of their meetings that bills four does not, however round the number sounds.
The method
How the conversion works
- Why days get quoted at all. Clients budget in days because a day is a unit of diary they can picture handing over; agencies staff in days for the same reason. The day is a legitimate unit — the mistake is not using it, it is letting it smuggle in an hours assumption nobody agreed to. Converting at your own billable shape keeps the unit and removes the smuggle: the day stays a day, and its price is built from the hours it really holds.
- Two shapes of day. A delivery day is your work on your timetable — deep, focused, and most of it bills; six or seven billable hours is a believable shape for one. A presence day runs on the client’s timetable — on-site, in their meetings, available — and its hours bill differently, because the day is theirs: that is the day the × 8 end of the range can honestly price. Price the day being bought, not a generic day, and put the shape in writing before it starts. Our guide to day rates explained works through both shapes and the rules to state up front.
- Equivalence is the floor, not the ceiling. This page converts: it finds the day rate at which the hours you bill earn exactly your hourly rate — the floor below which a day quietly pays you less than your own price. A day a client books exclusively can fairly sit above that floor, because its unbilled hours are not free inventory; they are sold too, to that one client, who can fill them with meetings. Where an exclusive day lands above the floor is a judgement — the day rates guide puts most focused days between rate × 6 and rate × 8. Convert first, then decide where the booking sits.
- Half days and minimums. A half day still costs a whole day’s switching — the context load, the travel, the diary slot that cannot always be resold that week — which is why many freelancers set their minimum engagement at the full day, or price a half day well above half: the day rates guide puts half days at 55–65% of the day rate, with an hour limit stated. The meeting cost calculator makes the switching cost visible in your own numbers; it is the same non-billable hours, priced.
- Employee day rates are a different comparison. If the day rate on the table belongs to a salaried role, or a contract priced against one, do not compare it to your freelance day directly: an employee’s day arrives with employer costs paid and leave included, and your day has to fund both itself. The salary to freelance rate calculator and the hourly-to-salary equivalent calculator run that translation honestly, in both directions.
Disclaimer: This is a planning estimate for your own numbers, not financial advice. The billable shape of a day varies by trade, client and season; the honest input is the shape from your own tracked weeks, not this page’s default. A day rate is a price for a defined day — what the day holds, when it ends and what happens past the end belong in the agreement, not in this calculator.
Start from the rate itself. If yours is still a guess, the hourly rate calculator builds it from your income, your costs and your billable share first — a day rate converted from a guessed hourly rate is just a bigger guess. Then publish the two side by side, shapes attached, on your rate card.
Questions
Day rate calculator questions
Only on a fully billed day — one where all eight hours are billable client work, like an on-site day run to the client’s timetable. Most days are not built that way: meetings, admin, switching between tasks and waiting on feedback all take hours no invoice can carry. On this page’s defaults, $95 an hour across a day that bills five hours is a $475 day rate; the × 8 figure of $760 is the same rate wearing an eight-hour assumption. Neither number is wrong — they are prices for two different days. Quote the one you are actually selling, and say which it is.
Yes — with its shape attached. A day rate published bare will be read the market’s way, as eight billable hours; the same rate published as “a day is five billable hours of delivery work” starts the right conversation and protects the number. Put the day rate beside your hourly rate, state what a day holds and what happens past it, and keep both figures consistent — a day rate that contradicts your hourly rate invites a client to pick the cheaper arithmetic. Our guide to building a freelance rate card covers where the day rate sits on the page and the terms that travel with it.
Not on the headline alone — run the offer backwards first, the way this page does. A day rate can buy three things that are worth a lower implied hourly: a whole day sold at once, with no fragments left to fill around it; several days booked together, which removes the selling time between them; and a day whose shape you control. The retainer calculator prices that trade for monthly blocks — guaranteed days at a stated certainty discount. What never trades well is a lower rate for a single undefined day that stretches: if the implied hourly is below your rate and nothing else is on the table, name the day you are selling — its billable hours and its finish — and let the client choose that day at your rate, or a cheaper day that holds less.
Planning
More planning tools
Retainer Calculator
Days sold by the month instead of one at a time: price a block of reserved hours from your rate, see what a certainty discount costs across a year, and set the overage rate for work past the block.
Open tool →Salary to Freelance Rate Calculator
Comparing a day rate against a salaried role instead? Convert the salary into the freelance rate that genuinely replaces it — employer costs, expenses, tax and unpaid time added back, every step shown.
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