Turn your target income into a defensible hourly, day & project rate
What you want in your pocket — the whole calc works back from this.
Software, insurance, accounting, subscriptions, marketing, equipment.
Income + 15.3% self-employment tax. 25–35% is realistic. (%)
Buffer for risk & slow months — NOT your salary. (%)
260 weekdays − holidays − vacation − sick. ~230 is typical.
% of time you actually bill. Solo = 50–65%; avg 66%. (%)
Hours in a billable day. 8 is standard (some use 7.5).
Billable hours in a typical project, for the project quote.
This calculator converts your target take-home income into the hourly, daily, and project rate you actually need to charge — after the realities that wreck most consultants' pricing: you can't bill every hour, you pay your own overhead, you owe income plus self-employment tax, and you get no paid time off. It works backward from the money you want in your pocket, grosses it up for tax, adds your overhead and a profit buffer, then divides by realistic billable hours. The result is a defensible pricing floor in three formats, calculated privately in your browser, free.
Required revenue is built cost-plus: income ÷ (1 − taxRate) grosses your take-home up so tax is
covered, then overhead is added (treated as a deductible expense, not grossed up — the conservative choice),
then the whole cost base is multiplied by (1 + profitMargin). Billable capacity is
workingDays × billableHoursPerDay × utilization. The hourly rate is required
revenue ÷ billable hours, the day rate is hourly × hours-per-day, and the project
rate is hourly × your typical project hours. All rates are rounded up because a rate
is a floor, never a ceiling.
A consultant wants $120,000 take-home, has $18,000 overhead, a 28% effective tax rate, 15% profit margin, works 230 days at 8 billable hours/day with 60% utilization:
Notice the rate is far above $120,000 ÷ 2,080 = $58/hr. That gap — utilization, tax, overhead, and profit — is exactly what undercharging consultants leave on the table.
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Gross your target take-home up for tax (income ÷ (1 − tax rate)), add overhead, add a profit margin, then divide by realistic billable hours (working days × billable hours/day × utilization). This tool does all of it.
You only bill ~50–66% of your working time, pay the full 15.3% self-employment tax plus income tax, cover your own overhead, and get no paid time off. Salary ÷ 2,080 ignores all of that.
Be realistic: solo consultants land at 50–65%; the 2025 professional-services average was 66.4%. Above 85% is unsustainable. This single number moves your rate the most — overestimating it is the top cause of undercharging.
Yes. Self-employed consultants pay the full 15.3% FICA (12.4% Social Security to the 2026 wage base of $184,500 + 2.9% Medicare) on top of income tax. A blended 25–35% effective rate is realistic.
No. Your income is your wage and is already in the calc. Profit is a separate buffer for risk and slow months. Setting it to 0 gives a breakeven rate, not a business rate.
Yes — 100% free to calculate. Everything runs privately in your browser; nothing is stored or sold.
This is a planning estimate and pricing floor, not tax advice or a market-rate guarantee. It tells you what you must charge to hit your numbers — not what the market will pay; validate against real rates for your niche and region. The tax field is a simplified blended rate (income tax + 15.3% self-employment tax); actual liability depends on filing status, state, deductions (including the ~50% deductible half of SE tax and the 20% QBI deduction where eligible), and the 2026 Social Security wage base of $184,500 — consult a CPA before relying on the after-tax figure. Self-employment tax is 15.3% (12.4% Social Security, capped at the wage base, + 2.9% uncapped Medicare), with an extra 0.9% Medicare surtax above $200k single / $250k joint; the single blended % here is intentionally conservative and approximate. Overhead is treated as a pre-income-tax deductible expense (not grossed up), the conservative and defensible choice, which slightly understates required revenue if your overhead isn't fully deductible. Utilization is the dominant lever — moving from 60% to 70% changes the required rate ~15%, so don't optimistically assume 80%+. Rates are always rounded up (they are floors), so the clean displayed number is slightly conservative by design. Value-based and premium-niche rates can far exceed this cost-plus floor; this calculator sets the minimum, not the ceiling.
Everything is calculated in your browser. We don't store or sell your data.