Free freelance runway calculator
Runway is the number of months you can say no: the cash you could actually spend, divided by what a month actually costs you — business and life together. On the defaults below, $11,600 of spendable cash against a $3,550 month ($650 of business costs and $2,900 of personal costs) is 3.3 months of runway — 14.2 weeks — before the money runs out. It is not the emergency fund calculator, which sizes a target from your essential month for a stop you didn’t choose, and not the income smoothing calculator, which turns lumpy income into a steady draw. This page takes the cash you have and divides by the burn you have. Put your own month in.
Your cash and your burn
Why is the tax money excluded from the cash? Because it was never yours to spend: the tax set-aside is money already owed, passing through your account on its way to the tax authority. Counting it as runway turns a quiet quarter into a tax bill with a deadline — the runway has to be cash that is still yours on the day you need it.
Your runway
Enter the cash you hold and what a month costs you.
| Cash available | — |
| Business costs per month | — |
| Personal costs per month | — |
| Total monthly burn | — |
| Income that keeps arriving | — |
| Net monthly burn | — |
| Runway | — |
| Runway in weeks | — |
| Runs out | — |
| Cut personal costs | — |
| Add $500 a month of income that keeps arriving | — |
How the run-out month is read: the whole months are added to the current month, and the leftover fraction of a month places the landing early (first third of that month), in the middle (second third) or late (final third). A fractional runway does not earn a false-precise day.
Enter the cash — what you hold, what a month costs, what keeps arriving — and this line reads the shape of your position back to you.
Worked example
A freelancer holds $11,600 they could actually spend — savings, not the tax pot and not a credit line. The business costs $650 a month to keep alive, and life costs $2,900: the real floor of rent, food, bills and essentials, the same fixed month the slow season guide builds its cushion from. Nothing is guaranteed to keep arriving. Enter those numbers above and the calculator returns exactly this:
| Cash available | $11,600.00 |
| Business costs per month | $650.00 |
| Personal costs per month | $2,900.00 |
| Total monthly burn | $3,550.00 |
| Income that keeps arriving | $0.00 |
| Net monthly burn | $3,550.00 |
| Runway ($11,600 ÷ $3,550 = 3.27) | 3.3 months |
| Runway in weeks | 14.2 weeks |
| Cut personal costs by $300 a month | 3.57 months (+0.30) |
| Add $500 a month of kept income | 3.80 months (+0.54) |
And the date: start on 1 December 2026, and the three whole months — December, January, February — carry the cash into March, where the leftover fraction, 0.27 of a month, lands in the month’s first third. The money runs out in early March 2027. (The panel above counts from today, so its month will differ; the convention is the same.) Read the shape of the levers, too: neither one is dramatic, and that is the honest news about runway — it is rarely rescued by a single lever. It is built, across fat months, by all of them at once: a slightly lower floor, a little income that keeps arriving, and cash stocked on purpose before it is needed.
How runway works
- The burn has to be honest — and the usual dishonesty runs in both directions. The first lie is the comfort number: the month as you happily live it, treats included, which inflates the burn and makes every runway look terrifying. The second lie is quieter and worse: the bare-survival number, the rice-and-rent month you describe in a brave moment and would never actually live at for a quarter. What this division needs is the real floor — everything that would still have to be paid in a month with no work, at the level you would genuinely sustain. The slow season guide calls it the fixed line, and it is the same discipline: a runway computed on a floor you won’t hold is a date you won’t hit.
- The cash has to be cash. Three things commonly pose as it. The tax pot is spoken for — it belongs to the tax authority and is merely passing through your account. Credit is rented time: the month it buys comes back as next month’s burn, plus interest, whether or not any work has arrived to pay it. And money already owed out — the deposit a client paid against work not yet done, the bill already on the counter — is a liability wearing a balance’s clothes. Runway counts only what is still yours on the day you would spend it.
- Kept income subtracts — if it is really kept. A retainer that will keep paying through a quiet quarter, a maintenance contract, a partner’s steady contribution to shared costs: these lower the net burn dollar for dollar, and at the point where they cover the burn entirely the honest answer is the one the calculator gives — no run-out date, and none of the infinity symbols arithmetic would suggest. The caution sits in the word kept. Income from one client on a month’s notice is kept for exactly one month. When in doubt, run the page twice: once with it, once at zero, and know both numbers.
- Months are the unit, weeks are the lens, the date is the point. A runway of 3.3 months and a runway of 14.2 weeks are the same cash; the weeks version is often the more usable one, because freelance life is scheduled in weeks — a client’s notice period, a project’s length, the gap between an invoice and its payment. And the run-out month converts the division into something a calendar can hold: not a mood about money, but a season by which new work must exist. Every other plan on this site is quietly written against that date.
- Runway is the number behind the other numbers. It is what makes the rest of this site usable. Declining a bad-fit project — the decision the say-no guide walks through — is a runway decision before it is a courage decision: six months of cash says it calmly, six days says it never. Raising your rates reads the same way: the rate-rise guide’s break-even loss, the share of hours you could lose and still earn the same, is only spendable if the runway covers the losing. And a slow season stops being an emergency at the runway depth where it becomes a scheduling fact. Build the number first; the brave decisions get cheaper.
And the neighbouring reading of the same money: the emergency fund calculator views this cash from the target — your essential month times the months of cover you want, and the monthly saving that closes the gap from what you hold today. This page views it from today, with no target in the room. Read together, they tell you both where you stand and what standing better would cost: the fund names the destination, the runway names the deadline by which the destination starts to matter.