Calculate My Daily Rate

As a freelancer or independent contractor, understanding your daily rate is crucial for both profitability and accurate client quoting. This calculator helps you determine a sustainable daily rate based on your desired annual income, working days, and business expenses.

How to Calculate Your Daily Rate

Your daily rate isn't just about how much you want to earn per day; it needs to account for the full scope of running your freelance business. Here's a breakdown of the factors involved:

• Desired Annual Income: This is the gross amount you aim to earn before taxes and business expenses. Consider your personal living expenses, savings goals, and profit.
• Billable Working Days Per Year: Not every day of the year is a working day. You need to account for weekends, public holidays, vacation days, sick days, and potential downtime between projects. A common starting point is 200-240 days per year.
• Annual Business Expenses: These are the costs associated with running your freelance business. Examples include software subscriptions, hardware, office supplies, internet, phone, insurance, professional development, accounting fees, and marketing.

The formula to calculate your daily rate is:

Daily Rate = (Desired Annual Income + Annual Business Expenses) / Billable Working Days Per Year

By inputting these figures into our calculator, you'll get a clear estimate of the daily rate you need to charge to meet your financial goals and cover your business overheads.

function calculateDailyRate() { var desiredIncome = parseFloat(document.getElementById("desiredIncome").value); var billableDays = parseFloat(document.getElementById("billableDays").value); var annualExpenses = parseFloat(document.getElementById("annualExpenses").value); var resultDiv = document.getElementById("result"); resultDiv.innerHTML = ""; // Clear previous results if (isNaN(desiredIncome) || isNaN(billableDays) || isNaN(annualExpenses) || desiredIncome < 0 || billableDays <= 0 || annualExpenses < 0) { resultDiv.innerHTML = "Please enter valid positive numbers for all fields. Billable days must be greater than zero."; return; } var totalRevenueNeeded = desiredIncome + annualExpenses; var dailyRate = totalRevenueNeeded / billableDays; resultDiv.innerHTML = "Your estimated daily rate is: $" + dailyRate.toFixed(2) + ""; }