💼 Freelancer Rate Converter
Bidirectionally convert between hourly and annual rates. Factor in working hours, vacation days, holidays, and billable time to find your true rate.
📊 Hourly to Annual Conversion
📊 Annual to Hourly Conversion
📖 Usage Examples
💼 Web Developer: Hourly to Annual
A front-end developer charges $65/hour and works 40 hours/week with 20 days off (vacation + holidays).
🎯 Target $120k: Annual to Hourly
A graphic designer wants $120,000/year, works 7 hrs/day, 5 days/week, and takes 25 days off.
📅 Part-Time Consultant Strategy
A retired executive consults 3 days/week, 6 hrs/day, with 10 weeks off for travel. Target: $60,000/year at 90% billable.
❔ Frequently Asked Questions
Billable hours are the time you can directly charge clients. Non-billable time includes admin, marketing, proposal writing, skill development, and client communication. New freelancers often achieve 50-60% billable, established freelancers reach 70-80%, and agency-backed consultants may hit 85-90%. Track your time for a month to find your real percentage.
Your calculated rate only covers your desired net income. You should add approximately 15-30% to cover: self-employment tax (15.3%), health insurance (if self-funded), business expenses (software, equipment), retirement contributions, and a buffer for slow periods or late-paying clients.
There are 260 weekdays in a typical year (52 weeks × 5 days). From this, subtract your vacation days, public holidays, sick days, and any other planned time off. The default values in this calculator (15 vacation + 11 holidays) leave 234 working days.
Hourly rates work best for ongoing, variable-scope work where time is unpredictable. Daily or weekly rates are better for intensive short-term projects. Daily rates often imply higher commitment from the client and protect you against partial-day inefficiencies. Many experienced freelancers strongly prefer daily or project-based pricing.
As a rough rule, divide an annual salary by 2,000 (standard work-year hours) to get the equivalent hourly rate, then multiply by 1.3 to 1.5 to account for the lack of benefits (health insurance, 401k match, paid leave). For example, $100,000 salary = ~$50/hr W-2 equivalent, which should be $65-75/hr as a freelancer.
Consider raising your rates when: (1) you have more demand than capacity, (2) you've gained significant new skills or certifications, (3) a client has been with you for 12+ months without a rate adjustment, or (4) your billable percentage is consistently above 85%. Raise rates for new clients first, then transition existing clients gradually.
💼 About the Freelancer Rate Converter
This bidirectional converter addresses the most common pricing challenge freelancers face: translating between an hourly rate and an annual income, and vice versa. Unlike simple hourly × 2,080 calculations that assume you work 52 weeks a year with no time off and every hour is billable, our tool lets you dial in your actual working reality.
You can customize your hours per day, days per week, vacation days, public holidays, and — most importantly — your billable hours percentage. Billable time is what every freelancer quickly learns is the real constraint: the hours you can actually invoice clients, as opposed to the hours spent on admin, marketing, proposals, skill development, and client communication that don't generate direct revenue. The default 80% billable rate reflects the experience of established freelancers; newer freelancers may find themselves closer to 60-70% billable until they build efficient systems and a strong client pipeline.
The annual-to-hourly direction answers an equally important question: "If I want to earn $100,000 next year, what hourly rate do I need to charge?" The answer depends entirely on how many billable hours you can realistically log. Working 2,000 billable hours at $50/hour is very different from working 1,200 billable hours at $83/hour. The converter shows you both numbers and, critically, highlights the gap between theoretical capacity and billable reality.
Use this tool when you are: setting your rates as a new freelancer, evaluating whether to raise rates with existing clients, comparing a freelance opportunity against a salaried job offer, or planning your revenue targets for the upcoming year. For a deeper dive into the economics of freelancing, including self-employment tax planning, check out our Complete Guide to Self-Employment Tax.