What must you charge to match the job?
Your salary was never the whole package. See what the job is really worth, and the day rate that replaces it.
What they put in on top of your salary, not what you contribute.
What the same cover would cost you to buy.
Holiday plus anything else you take off. Freelancers are not paid for these.
Invoicing, chasing work, proposals, training. Worked, but not billable.
Insurance, accountant, software, equipment, workspace.
More options(5)
Life cover, training budget, equipment, anything with a cash value.
Used only to show what your employer pays you not to work.
Freelancers are rarely paid for these. Budgeting zero is optimistic.
260 is every weekday.
To match a $80,000 job
$495 / day
The job is worth $88,000, not $80,000 — your employer quietly adds $8,000 on top. Replace that plus $6,000 of business costs across 190 billable days and you need $495 a day, or $62 an hour. Dividing salary by working days would have told you $308 — about 38% short.
- Day rate needed
- $495
- Hourly
- $62
- Billable days
- 190 of 260
What your employer was quietly paying for
| Line | A year |
|---|---|
| Salary | $80,000 |
| Employer pensionPaid on top of salary — you now fund this yourself. | $4,000 |
| Health coverBuying the same cover individually usually costs more. | $3,000 |
| Other benefits | $1,000 |
| What the job is actually worth | $88,000 |
| Business costs you now carryNot part of the package — money out before anything reaches you. | $6,000 |
| Revenue you must bill | $94,000 |
Your paid leave is worth about $7,692 — 25 days of salary for days you did not work. It is not added above, because your salary already includes it; as a freelancer it simply becomes days you cannot bill.
If you bill…
This is the number nobody can promise you
| Assumption | Day rate needed | Billable days |
|---|---|---|
| 63% of the year — cautious | $573 / day | 164 days |
| 73% of the year — middle | $495 / day | 190 days |
| 83% of the year — optimistic | $435 / day | 216 days |
Utilisation is the one genuine guess here, and the rate is very sensitive to it. Everything else on this page — the package value, the expenses — is arithmetic on figures you supplied, so it gets no range. A first year is usually nearer the cautious row than the optimistic one.
Tax is not in this number
This compares the two packages before either side's tax, and that is deliberate. Self-employment is taxed differently from employment in both jurisdictions, and the answer changes again depending on whether you trade as a sole trader, a limited company, or something else. Modelling that from figures this site has not sourced would be guessing, and a guessed tax figure is worse than an absent one.
So treat the day rate as the floor before tax, not your income. What you actually keep depends on a structure only you and an accountant in your country can decide.
Aiming at a number instead of a job
If you have already decided what you want to earn, work backwards from that figure instead. The same arithmetic runs in reverse, with one addition: a percentage you set aside for your own tax, so the answer is what reaches you rather than what you bill.
Work back from a target income
Opens with the working days, costs and hours you set here.
Why salary divided by working days is badly wrong
It is the first calculation almost everyone does, and it under-prices the work by a wide margin — usually by a third or more. It goes wrong in three places at once, and each one compounds the last.
The salary was never the whole package. An employer paying you also pays into your pension, may cover health insurance, and buys the equipment you work on. None of it appears on the job advert, and all of it becomes your problem the day you leave.
You will bill far fewer days than you work. Holiday, illness, invoicing, chasing payment, writing proposals, the work you pitch for and do not win — all of it is time, and none of it is billable. Someone working a full year commonly bills around two-thirds of it.
Being in business costs money. Insurance, an accountant, software, a laptop, somewhere to sit. That comes out before anything reaches you.
The one figure to argue with
Everything on this page is arithmetic on numbers you supplied, with one exception: how much of the year you will actually sell. Nobody can tell you that in advance, which is why it is the only input given a cautious / likely / optimistic range.
Move it and watch the rate. The sensitivity is the lesson — a rate that works at 80% utilisation can be badly short at 60%, and a first year is usually nearer the cautious row. Setting a rate that only survives a good year is how freelancers end up working more for less.
What this does not answer
Tax. Deliberately, and it is worth being clear why rather than burying it. Self-employment is taxed differently from employment in both jurisdictions here, and differently again depending on whether you trade as a sole trader, a limited company, or something else. The take-home pay calculator models employee tax, where every figure is statutory and sourced. There is no equivalent sourced data for self-employment on this site, so rather than approximate it, this compares the two packages before tax and says so.
It also cannot price the things that are not money: whether you want the work, the security, the colleagues, or the freedom. Those decide most of these choices, and no calculator has an opinion on them.
Common questions
What utilisation should I assume?
Should I include my own pension contribution?
Why does paid leave not add to the package total?
Is the day rate what I will earn?
What about a limited company or an S-corp?
Not tax advice. This compares two packages before tax and does not model self-employment tax, national insurance, or any company structure. Individual circumstances vary enormously.
Not advice. This tool applies arithmetic to assumptions you entered. It does not know your circumstances, your tax position or your goals, and it is not a recommendation to buy, sell or hold anything. Past returns do not predict future ones, and no figure here is a forecast.