Every freelancer I know has asked the same question in the same panicked way, usually the night before a call: how much should I charge? And almost every answer online is some version of “charge what you’re worth,” which is useless advice delivered with a straight face.
Here is the thing nobody says plainly: your rate is not a measure of your talent. It is a number that has to survive contact with your rent, your tax bill, your unpaid admin hours and the months where two clients go quiet at once. If it can’t survive that, it’s the wrong number, no matter how good you are.
So this is not a list of average rates. It’s the arithmetic I’d walk a friend through, plus the part most guides skip — how to say the number out loud without flinching, and how to move it up later.
[PLACEHOLDER: nota de experiencia propia — cómo Javier fijó su primera tarifa freelance, el error de cobrar por hora al inicio y qué cambió al pasar a precio por proyecto.]
Start with the number your life costs, not the number you saw on Reddit
Rate threads are seductive because they give you a number without making you do any work. They’re also close to worthless, because a $95/hour rate in a city with cheap rent and public healthcare is a completely different life from $95/hour with a US insurance premium and a mortgage.
The only starting point that means anything is your floor: the rate below which freelancing is a worse deal than a job. You calculate it once, you write it down, and you never quote under it again — not for exposure, not for a “foot in the door,” not for a client who says the next project will be bigger.
Three inputs, in this order:
- What you need to take home per year, after tax.
- What running the business costs — software, hardware, insurance, accountant, coworking.
- How many hours you can actually bill — which is far fewer than you think, and gets its own section below.
The floor rate calculation, worked through
Let’s make it concrete. The numbers below are a worked example, not a benchmark — swap in your own and the structure still holds. Say you want to end up with $60,000 in your pocket.
| Line item | Annual amount | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Take-home target | $60,000 | What actually lands in your account |
| Tax and social contributions | +$21,000 | Assume ~25–30% of gross; check your jurisdiction [CONFIRM] |
| Software and subscriptions | +$1,800 | Invoicing, storage, AI writing, time tracking, design |
| Hardware and workspace | +$2,400 | Laptop amortised, desk, internet, coworking day passes |
| Insurance, accountant, legal | +$2,600 | Liability cover, tax filing, contract review |
| Unpaid time buffer | +$4,000 | Sick days, holidays, the client who pays 60 days late |
| Required gross revenue | $91,800 | This is the number your rate has to produce |
Notice what just happened. The $60,000 you wanted became $91,800 you have to invoice — a 53% gap that exists before you’ve done a single hour of work. Freelancers who quote off their old salary rather than their gross requirement are the ones who end the year wondering where the money went.
Why your billable hours are fewer than you think
This is where most rate calculations quietly fall apart. People divide their revenue target by 2,080 hours — the standard full-time year — and arrive at a rate that would only work if every waking work hour were invoiced. None of them are.
Pitching, invoicing, chasing late payers, bookkeeping, updating your portfolio, answering “quick question” emails: all of it is work, none of it is billable. Here’s the honest version of a freelance year:
| Where the year goes | Weeks / hours | Billable? |
|---|---|---|
| Calendar year | 52 weeks | — |
| Holiday, sick days, public holidays | −6 weeks | No |
| Working weeks remaining | 46 weeks | — |
| Hours per working week | 40 hours | — |
| Admin, sales, marketing, bookkeeping | −14 hours/week | No |
| Realistic billable hours per week | 26 hours | Yes |
| Billable hours per year | ≈1,196 | Yes |
Now the division does something useful: $91,800 ÷ 1,196 hours ≈ $77 per hour. That is your floor. Not your target, not your ceiling — the point below which you are subsidising your clients with your own savings.
If 26 billable hours a week sounds pessimistic, track a month honestly before you argue. Most people are shocked by the gap between hours worked and hours invoiced, and a timer is the cheapest way to find out. Our guide to tracking billable hours accurately covers how to do it without turning your day into surveillance, and the time tracking apps we rate for freelancers will do the counting for you.
Three ways to package the same rate
Your floor rate is an internal number. It does not have to be the number on the invoice. How you package it changes what the client hears, how much you earn per hour of effort, and how much of your month is predictable.
| Model | Works best when | The catch |
|---|---|---|
| Hourly | Scope is genuinely unknown — audits, ongoing support, “help us figure this out” work | Punishes you for getting faster; every efficiency gain cuts your income |
| Fixed project fee | Deliverables are defined and you’ve done this type of work before | Scope creep eats the margin unless the contract names what’s excluded |
| Monthly retainer | The client needs steady capacity and you want predictable cash flow | Quiet months feel free to the client; busy months feel unpaid to you |
| Value-based | Your work has a measurable revenue or cost outcome you can point to | Requires the client to share numbers, and most won’t on a first project |
My honest read: hourly is a fine place to start and a bad place to stay. The moment you can estimate a project type within about 20%, quote a fixed fee — you keep the upside of your own speed, and the conversation stops being about hours and starts being about outcomes. Just make sure the fee is anchored in your floor: 40 estimated hours at a $77 floor means the project cannot be quoted at $2,500, however round that number feels.
Sanity-checking your number against the market
Once you have a floor, and only then, it’s worth looking outward — not to find your rate, but to find out whether your floor is sellable in your niche. Three checks that actually return signal:
- Job listings for the equivalent employee role. Take the salary, add roughly 30–40% for the benefits and employment costs a client avoids by hiring you, and divide by billable hours. It gets you a defensible range fast.
- Freelance marketplaces, read sideways. Ignore the cheapest listings entirely. Look at what the fully-booked people in your specialty charge — they’re the ones proving the ceiling.
- Ask three peers, specifically. Not “what do you charge” but “what did you charge for a project like this one.” Specific questions get real answers; general ones get bragging.
If your floor sits well above what your niche will bear, you have a positioning problem, not a pricing problem — and the fix is narrowing what you do, not lowering what you charge. A generalist copywriter competes with everyone. A copywriter who writes onboarding email sequences for B2B SaaS competes with about eleven people, and charges accordingly.
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How to raise your rate on a client you already have
New clients are easy — you simply quote the new number. Existing clients are where freelancers freeze, so here is the sequence that works:
- Give notice, don’t negotiate. Email 30–60 days ahead: “From 1 November my rate for this work will be $X.” Announce it; don’t ask permission.
- Anchor it to their outcome, not your costs. “The scope has grown to include Y and Z” lands. “My expenses went up” invites them to feel that’s your problem.
- Offer one bridge, not three. Locking the old rate for the current project, or a slightly reduced scope at the old price. One option is generous; three looks like you’re negotiating against yourself.
- Be ready to lose one. If you raise rates and nobody leaves, you were too cheap. Expect to lose the lowest-paying client, and plan the raise for a month when you can absorb it.
The conversation gets much easier when the paperwork around it looks professional. A proposal that frames the fee inside the outcome does most of the persuading before you ever get on the call — that’s the whole point of writing a proposal that wins the work rather than one that lists tasks and a total.
The tools that make a higher rate feel normal
Pricing is partly psychological, and the packaging matters more than freelancers like to admit. A $9,000 fee arriving as a PDF invoice from a Google Doc template feels expensive. The same fee inside a proper proposal, with a signed contract and a branded invoice, feels like a business transaction.
Three places that’s worth a small monthly spend:
- Contracts and proposals in one place. All-in-one platforms bundle proposal, e-signature, contract and invoice so a client says yes once. [AFFILIATE: bonsai] [PLACEHOLDER: captura de la pantalla de propuestas]
- Invoicing that chases for you. Automatic payment reminders remove the most awkward email you’ll ever write. [AFFILIATE: freshbooks] — see our roundup of invoicing software built for freelancers if you’re picking one.
- A timer running on everything. Even on fixed-fee work, the data tells you whether your quote was right. [AFFILIATE: toggl]
None of this raises your rate on its own. It removes the small frictions that make you quote low out of embarrassment.
Where this framework breaks down
I’d rather tell you the limits than pretend the arithmetic solves everything.
It breaks down for brand-new freelancers with no portfolio. Your floor might be $77 and the market’s answer might be “prove it first.” Taking two or three projects below floor to build evidence is a defensible investment — as long as you set the number of projects in advance and tell the client it’s an introductory rate, in writing. What kills people is drifting into a permanent discount they never named.
It also breaks down for work with wildly uneven value. If one afternoon of your consulting saves a client six figures, hourly math is leaving money on the table and no spreadsheet will tell you that. And it breaks down in markets with fixed price ceilings — some platforms and public-sector contracts simply won’t pay above a band, and the correct response is to leave that market, not to lower your floor to fit it.
Who should use this — and who should ignore it
Use it if you’re currently guessing, or you’ve been charging the same rate for more than eighteen months, or you finish profitable-looking months with no money left. The floor calculation will show you exactly where the leak is, and it takes about forty minutes with a spreadsheet.
Ignore it if you’re already fully booked at a rate that funds the life you want. A waiting list is the strongest pricing signal that exists, and it says raise the number, not recalculate it. Equally, ignore it if you’re pricing a genuine outcome — a launch, a recovery, a system that will run for years. There, the client’s return is the anchor and your hourly floor is just a sanity check.
My actual recommendation: calculate the floor once, add 25% so you have room to discount without going underwater, and quote that as a fixed project fee. Review it every six months, on a date in your calendar, not when you happen to feel undervalued. More on the money side of running a one-person business in our freelance business and money section.
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Frequently asked questions
Should I put my rates on my website?
A starting-from figure or a project range filters out unserious enquiries and saves you calls that were never going to convert. A precise hourly rate is worth hiding, because it invites comparison on the one dimension where you don’t want to compete.
What do I say when a client asks for my hourly rate?
“I quote by project, because it means you know the total upfront and I’m not billing you for being slow.” If they insist, give the number without apology or explanation. The pause after it is theirs to fill, not yours.
How often should I raise my rates?
Review every six months, raise at least annually for existing clients, and raise for new clients the moment you’re turning work away. If your last three proposals were all accepted immediately, your number is too low.
Is it bad to charge less than other freelancers in my field?
It’s bad if it’s accidental. Being deliberately cheaper as a strategy — faster turnaround, narrower scope, junior positioning — is a real business model. Being cheaper because you never did the math is how freelancers burn out at year two.
How do I handle clients who say my rate is too high?
Reduce the scope, never the rate. “That’s above your budget — here’s what I can deliver for $X instead” keeps your number intact and hands them the decision. Discounting on request teaches every future client that your first number is negotiable.
Do I need to charge more if the client is a large company?
Usually yes, and not out of cynicism. Big clients bring longer approval chains, more meetings, stricter compliance and slower payment, all of which consume unbillable hours. Pricing that overhead in is accurate, not opportunistic.
Written by Javier · Chile. We test the tools we recommend and only cover software we’d run in a one-person business. Some links are affiliate links, at no extra cost to you.