Open Source Freelance Rate Calculator Template
Work backwards from the life you want to the number you quote.
A freelance hourly and day rate calculator that starts from your target take-home, then subtracts tax, business costs, unpaid weeks, and the hours nobody pays you for.
This is the real app, not a mockup. Whatever you enter in the demo stays in your browser and belongs to nobody.
What you get
One zip. Everything to own it.
Every rate calculator that gets this wrong gets it wrong in the same two places: it treats all fifty-two weeks as working weeks, and it treats every working hour as billable. Neither is true for anyone. This one starts from the take-home you actually want, grosses it up for tax, adds your business costs, then divides by the hours left after holiday, illness, quiet spells, and the half of the week that goes on sales, admin, and invoicing. It shows the break-even rate that pays for costs and tax and nothing else, a sensitivity grid of what the same target costs at 40% through 80% billable, and a reverse check that runs your current rate back through the same arithmetic to show what it really leaves you. It also does the arithmetic nobody wants to see: your rate times 2,080 hours is not a salary, and the gap is usually enormous.
- Hourly, day, and average-week rates from a target take-home
- Tax set-aside, business costs, unpaid weeks, and billable share all modelled
- Break-even rate that covers costs and tax and pays you nothing
- Sensitivity grid across billable share and weeks off
- Reverse check: what your current rate really leaves after everything
- The 2,080-hour salary comparison, done honestly
freelance-rate-calculator/├── app/the running Next.js app├── agent/START_HERE, PROJECT_MAP, RULES, RECIPES, TESTS, DEPLOY├── CLAUDE.mdread automatically by Claude Code├── AGENTS.mdread automatically by Codex├── .cursor/rules/loaded automatically by Cursor└── README.mdrun it, then make it yours
Inside the app
Customize with AI
Your agent already knows this codebase.
Ships with CLAUDE.md, AGENTS.md, Cursor rules, and a full agent handbook — project map, safety rules, recipes, tests, and deploy notes.
Prompts written against this app
Run it
5 min to your own copy.
- 01Create your editable app copy and unzip it.
- 02Run npm install.
- 03Run npm run dev and open http://localhost:3000.
- 04Read /agent/START_HERE.md before customizing.
- 05Swap the local-first storage boundary for your own backend when ready.
Freelance Rate Calculator data stays in this browser by default.
No account, backend, or cloud sync is included in the current package.
An agent can add optional sync later while preserving the local-first default.
This package is standard-ready for Create My App and AI customization.
A full app-only PWA install route is not enabled yet for this app.
Questions people ask
Start from the take-home you want, gross it up for tax, add your annual business costs, then divide by the hours you can genuinely bill — not 2,080. After holiday, illness, and the non-billable half of the week, most freelancers bill somewhere between 900 and 1,300 hours a year.
Because it has to cover everything an employer used to. Unpaid time off, non-billable hours, your own equipment and software, and the employer's share of tax all come out of the same number. The calculator shows both figures side by side so the comparison is honest.
Between 50% and 70% is typical for solo freelancers. Below 50% usually means sales and admin are eating the week; above 80% is rarely sustainable for more than a few months.
No. There is no account and no server. Everything you type stays in your browser, which is where your income should stay.
If this isn’t quite right
Take Freelance Rate Calculator and make it yours.
Free, MIT, 5 min to running. The demo above is exactly what lands in your folder.