Tool 1 of the Get Paid Kit · For house sitters

House sitter hourly rate calculator

This free calculator works out the rate a freelance house sitter should charge, starting from the income you need — then converts it into the overnight fee clients actually pay. Nobody buys an hour of sitting; they buy a home that stays lived-in while they are away, priced per night or per week. The honest unit underneath is the hour of active care inside the sit — the feeding, walking, watering, mail and checks — because that is the part of the day that is work in the ordinary sense. With the honest presets below the rate lands near $35 an hour — and the conversion that matters: a typical overnight sit holds about three hours of active care, so the night prices at about $105, and a week-long sit at about $735.

Runs in your browser. Nothing you enter is uploaded, sent to a server or stored anywhere except this device.

The pricing reality for freelance house sitters

House sitting is sold by the night and earned by the task, and the two only agree if the nightly fee was built from the tasks in the first place. Inside one overnight sit are the morning and evening pet routines, the plants, the mail and bins, the walk-round that keeps the house looking occupied — and then the presence itself, which is genuinely valuable and genuinely not hours you can stack or sell twice. A nightly fee copied from a platform listing carries the tasks whether it covers them or not. Price the active hour first, and the night becomes an assembly: so many hours of care, plus the presence the fee is really buying.

The sitting year is lumpy in a way few trades match. Sits cluster when clients travel — the summer holidays, the school breaks, Christmas — and between bookings come gaps that are unpaid even though you are working: replying to enquiries, meeting next clients, travelling to the next house. The presets below use a 70% billable share: most of the working year spent inside paid sits, with the gaps, the meet-and-greets and the travel days taking theirs first.

The numbers below are starting presets, not a survey: a $30,000 target income — the presets treat sitting as the main income, so scale them if it is one strand among several — $3,600 a year of expenses covering travel between sits, insurance and bonding, background checks and platform fees, kit and supplies, booking and marketing, a 22% tax estimate, four weeks of vacation, a 40-hour week and 70% billable time. It is one of the lowest-overhead trades on this site; what the fee buys is trust and reliability, and the rate is where those get paid. With those starting numbers the calculator lands near $35 an hour.

Your numbers — house sitter presets

Your recommended rate

$0 / hour
$0Day rate (8 hours)
0Billable hours per year
Income + expenses needed$0
Grossed up for tax$0
With profit margin$0
Working weeks0
Total working hours0
Billable hours0

Your rate is saved on this device only, so the Proposal Generator can show it when you price a project.

Easy to miss

Costs house sitters forget to put in the rate

  • The gaps between sits. The sit that ends on Tuesday and the next that starts on Friday leave three empty days in the diary and zero in the bank. Across a year the gaps are weeks; the annual rate is the only place they get paid for.
  • Travel to the house. Fuel or fares to reach each sit — across town, or across the county for the long rural booking. Clients think of the fee as buying the nights; the journey to the first night rides inside it.
  • Insurance, bonding and checks. A client hands you their keys, their pets and an empty house. The policy, the bonding and the background checks that make that trust reasonable are renewed every year, and they are a cost of being bookable at all.
  • Meet-and-greets. The first visit — meeting the owners, learning the alarm, the boiler and the dog — is unpaid, and it happens before every booking. Half a day a month of them is a real cost wearing a friendly face.
  • The platform’s cut. Where bookings come through a sitting platform, its percentage leaves the fee before the money reaches you. A rate set on the headline price is set on money you never see; set it on what you keep.
The maths

How this calculator works

Start with the time you can genuinely sell. Take 52 weeks, subtract your vacation weeks, multiply by your hours per week, then multiply by your billable percentage. With the house sitter presets — four weeks off, 40 hours a week, 70% billable — that is 1,344 billable hours a year: the share of the year spent inside paid sits, once the gaps, the meet-and-greets and the travel between houses have taken theirs.

Next, work out what those hours must bring in. Add your desired income and your annual business expenses together — $33,600 on the presets — gross the total up for tax by dividing by one minus your tax rate — at a 22% estimate, divide by 0.78 to get $43,077 — then add your profit margin to reach $47,385 and divide by your billable hours. That final number, $35, is the rate below which the year stops adding up.

Now translate the hour into the nightly fee clients actually pay — carefully, because this is where sitting maths goes wrong. An overnight sit is not 24 billable hours, and it is not the 8-hour day rate above either ($282 is a full day of active care — a move-in day, a deep clean and prep). A typical night holds about three hours of active care: three hours at $35 is a $105 night. A light sit — plants, mail and a cat that ignores you — is nearer two hours, $70. A pet-heavy sit with a dog walked three times is nearer four, $140. Seven nights at the standard conversion is a $735 week.

Disclaimer: This is a planning estimate, not tax advice. Tax rates, deductions and allowances vary by country, state and business structure. Enter the rate you expect to pay, and check significant decisions with a qualified accountant.
Next: build a proposal with this rate Use the general rate calculator
Questions

House sitter rate questions

Because the night is built out of active hours plus presence, and only one of those scales with the work. The hourly rate is how you check a nightly fee you inherited — from a platform’s suggested prices, or from what sitters charged when you started — against your own costs, your gaps and your tax. Sitters who skip the check often find their busiest summer was their worst paid, and the fee, not the workload, was the reason.
A little, and for an honest reason: the tasks do not shrink, but a month-long sit removes the gaps, the travel and the meet-and-greets that sit between short bookings, and those are real costs the nightly fee normally carries. Discounting against costs you genuinely do not incur is arithmetic; discounting because a long booking feels like it should be cheaper is how a good month quietly becomes a badly paid one.
Because sits cluster and gaps do not bill. Even a well-booked sitter loses days between engagements, days travelling to the next house, and hours meeting clients who may never book. Seventy percent — roughly seven days in ten inside a paid sit across the year — is a realistic start for an established sitter with repeat clients. A new sitter building a book should set it lower and let the rate tell the truth about the emptier diary.

Rates differ by trade — the same maths runs with different presets for graphic designer rates, freelance writer rates, web developer rates, marketing consultant rates, photographer rates, video editor rates, virtual assistant rates, social media manager rates, bookkeeper rates, translator rates, business coach rates, illustrator rates, copywriter rates, UX designer rates, SEO consultant rates, data analyst rates, motion designer rates, technical writer rates, podcast editor rates, email marketer rates, life coach rates, proofreader rates, event planner rates, voice actor rates, online tutor rates, personal trainer rates, interior designer rates, music producer rates, grant writer rates, UX researcher rates, book editor rates, transcriptionist rates, presentation designer rates, brand strategist rates, video producer rates, art director rates, WordPress developer rates, mobile app developer rates, 3D artist rates, game developer rates, Shopify developer rates, online business manager rates, podcast producer rates, data entry specialist rates, UX writer rates, copy editor rates, wedding photographer rates, resume writer rates, data scientist rates, instructional designer rates, business analyst rates, email designer rates, interpreter rates, audiobook narrator rates, landscape designer rates, wedding planner rates, wedding videographer rates, personal chef rates, dog trainer rates, music teacher rates, florist rates, cake baker rates, tour guide rates, pet groomer rates, house painter rates, handyman rates, locksmith rates, home organizer rates, pressure washer rates, carpet cleaner rates, chimney sweep rates, pool cleaner rates, window cleaner rates, tattoo artist rates, massage therapist rates, barber rates, makeup artist rates, hairstylist rates, nail technician rates, tailor rates, house cleaner rates, electrician rates, plumber rates, pest control technician rates, ppc specialist rates, content strategist rates, wedding DJ rates, dog walker rates, audio engineer rates, caterer rates, mover rates, appliance repair technician rates, nanny rates, piano tuner rates, garage door technician rates, bicycle mechanic rates, upholsterer rates, jeweller rates, cobbler rates, blacksmith rates, sign writer rates, farrier rates, mobile car detailer rates, genealogist rates, saddler rates, arborist rates, travel agent rates, watch repairer rates, doula rates, sleep consultant rates, home stager rates, wedding officiant rates, college admissions consultant rates, mobile notary rates, personal shopper rates, welder rates, carpenter rates, glazier rates, plasterer rates, tiler rates, roofer rates, bricklayer rates, HVAC technician rates, dressmaker rates, concrete finisher rates, drywall installer rates, flooring installer rates, gardener rates, fence installer rates, gutter installer rates, solar installer rates, stonemason rates, deck builder rates, insulation installer rates, cabinet maker rates, paving installer rates, furniture restorer rates, blind installer rates, driving instructor rates, picture framer rates, aerial installer rates, car mechanic rates, clock repairer rates, oven cleaner rates, smart home installer rates, alarm installer rates, drain cleaner rates, curtain installer rates, irrigation installer rates, shutter installer rates, artificial grass installer rates, fireplace installer rates, bathtub refinisher rates, snow removal professional rates, landscape lighting installer rates and radon mitigation specialist rates, or start from the general freelance hourly rate calculator.