Minimum viable hourly rate
Use your monthly costs, taxes, savings target, and realistic billable hours to calculate the minimum hourly rate that keeps your freelance business sustainable.
Rent, software, insurance, food, utilities, etc.
Estimated taxes you need to reserve each month.
Emergency fund, retirement, growth, or profit target.
Only count hours you can actually invoice.
Use less than 100% to protect against slow months.
Extra margin above break-even.
Formula: ((expenses + taxes + savings) ÷ (billable hours × utilization factor)) × (1 + buffer)
Fixed project rate
Estimate a project quote using your baseline hourly rate, scoped hours, revision rounds, meetings, overhead, and risk buffer.
Use your minimum viable rate or your standard billable rate.
The main time needed to complete the work.
How many rounds are included in the quote.
Average time each revision round takes.
Calls, onboarding, email, QA, handoff, reporting.
Stock, subcontractors, travel, paid tools, etc.
Covers untracked time and business overhead.
Use higher values for uncertainty or demanding clients.
Formula: ((total scoped hours × hourly rate) + direct costs) × (1 + overhead) × (1 + risk) × rush fee
Value-based pricing
Estimate a premium price based on the client’s expected financial outcome, your confidence level, and the share of value you want to capture.
Revenue gain, cost savings, retention value, or pipeline impact.
The percentage of value you price against.
Higher multipliers fit higher certainty and stronger impact.
Increase for multi-stakeholder, technical, or high-friction work.
Ensures your premium price never drops below your baseline.
Set 0 to ignore. Useful for internal proposal caps.
Formula: (outcome value × capture %) × outcome multiplier × (1 + complexity), then constrained by floor / ceiling