True Hourly Rate Calculator

Freelancers price against a number that does not exist. The rate is quoted per billable hour, and it is paid for out of every hour of the week — the quoting, the chasing, the admin, the revisions nobody is paying for, and the weeks when nothing comes in at all.

This does the arithmetic with both denominators. It works out the rate you actually need to reach a take-home figure, and then it shows what your current rate delivers per hour of your life. On the default numbers those are $89.65 and $20.75, and the second one is the figure that changes minds.

Three things it will not let you off. Tax is grossed up rather than subtracted, because wanting sixty thousand in the bank at twenty-five per cent means invoicing eighty, not seventy-five. Bad debt is solved into the rate, because the invoices that get paid have to carry the ones that do not. And the working year is weeks you actually work, not fifty-two — pricing off fifty-two weeks at a hundred per cent billable understates the rate you need by about a third, and it is exactly how people arrive at a number that feels fine and is not.

Underneath is a ladder: every rate around yours, the take-home each one leaves, what each is worth per hour of your life, and how far each lands from your target. The exact rate you need has its own row, not a rounded one.

Save as many versions as you like and put any two side by side, figure against figure, with the better one on each line marked and the difference in its own column. That screen is the one that decides things, and it is the part a free calculator cannot do at all.

It is not tax advice and does not know your tax code, your allowances or your local rules — the tax percentage is one you supply. What it does is the arithmetic underneath, which almost nobody does and which does not need an accountant.

One HTML file. No account, no subscription, no internet needed. Opens on Windows, Mac and Android; the readme explains the extra step on iPhone and iPad, where Apple blocks JavaScript in downloaded files and every tool of this kind is affected.

Everything lives in your browser on your device. Nothing is uploaded, which is why it works offline and why nobody else can see your figures — and it also means clearing your browsing data deletes it. The tool does not pretend otherwise: the header shows how long since your last export at all times, turns amber after three days and red after seven, and export is one click that produces a plain file you keep.