2026 · freelance
Freelance rate calculator
Your old $50/hr salary is not $50/hr freelance. Enter the take-home you want and see the floor rate that actually covers self-employment tax, benefits, and the hours you can't bill.
The most expensive freelance mistake is pricing off your old salary. As an employee, someone else paid half your payroll tax, covered your benefits, and paid you for time off. Freelance, all of that lands on your rate. And only part of your week is billable. This runs the 1099 tax math backward: from the take-home you want to the rate that delivers it.
Not hours worked, hours you can actually invoice.
Holidays, sick days, gaps between clients.
What your employer used to cover. From the COBRA/marketplace tool if you have it.
Software, equipment, insurance, accounting.
Nothing you enter is stored or sent anywhere, it runs in your browser.
Why the floor is higher than you'd guess
On a $90,000 target take-home with typical costs, the floor lands near $115/hr, about 1.54× the $75/hr you'd get by just dividing take-home by billable hours. The gap is self-employment tax, income tax, health insurance and overhead, spread over the hours you can actually invoice. Every one of those is a real cost the salary quietly absorbed.
By field
Each field has its own overhead and its own billable reality, both change the floor:
- Graphic Designer rates
- Web Developer rates
- Writer / Copywriter rates
- Photographer rates
- Consultant rates
- Marketing Consultant rates
- Video Editor rates
- Bookkeeper rates
- Virtual Assistant rates
- Social Media Manager rates
- Translator rates
- Personal Trainer rates
Questions
Why isn't my freelance rate just my salary divided by hours?
Because a salaried $50/hr came with an employer paying half your FICA, covering benefits, and paying you for 2,080 hours including PTO. Freelance, you pay all the self-employment tax, buy your own benefits, only some hours are billable, and time off is unpaid. In this example the real floor is 1.54× the naive take-home ÷ hours number.
How many hours a week can I actually bill?
Rarely all of them. Admin, pitching, revisions, and gaps between clients are unpaid, so 20 to 30 billable hours out of a 40-hour week is typical. Fewer billable hours means a higher rate for the same take-home, the calculator makes that trade-off explicit.
Where do I find the market rate for my field?
The BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics has median salaries by occupation and metro. Convert the salary to an hourly benchmark and compare it to your computed floor. This tool never invents a market band, it tells you the rate you need and leaves the market number to a real source.
Related
- 1099 tax calculator the tax on that income
- Quarterly taxes pay it in through the year
- Health coverage the benefits number to plug in
- Layoff runway freelancing to bridge a gap
An estimate for 2026 on your own numbers. Tax math from the site's engine; market wages are not included, bring your own from BLS. Nothing you enter is stored. Not financial advice.