Setting a freelance rate by guessing what sounds fair is how people end up underpaid. This calculator works backwards from the income you actually want. Enter your target take-home annual income, how many billable hours you realistically work per week, the number of working weeks per year (leaving room for holidays and admin time), your yearly business expenses and the share of income that goes to tax, and it computes the hourly rate you must charge to hit your goal. The key insight it captures is that only a fraction of your hours are billable and that expenses and tax come off the top, so your rate has to be higher than a simple salary-divided-by-hours figure. Use it to price new projects with confidence. Everything runs locally in your browser.