The Freelance Pricing Calculator: Know What to Charge Before You Quote

Most freelancers pick a number that feels safe, quote it, and find out months later they were working for less than minimum wage. The maths that would have told them isn't complicated. Nobody just sits down and does it.

This spreadsheet does it for you.

How it works:

Set your rate once. Enter what you want to take home, your costs, and your tax rate. It works backwards through the number of hours you can realistically bill and returns the hourly rate you actually need. Most people are shocked by this number the first time they see it.

Price each job in two minutes. Enter your hours by phase. It adds a buffer, applies rush and difficult-client surcharges, and returns three prices: lean, standard, and premium. Because a client choosing between your options has already decided to hire you.

Send it without rewriting it. The wording tab pulls your client's name and live prices into copy-paste sentences, plus what to say when they call it expensive and the scope line that protects you later.

Find out if you were right. The job log compares estimated hours against actual and tells you which services you consistently underprice. Three honest months here is worth more than any pricing course.

What you get: A five-tab Excel workbook with 83 working formulas. Yellow cells are yours to fill in. Everything else calculates itself.

Who this is for: Freelancers who have work coming in and no confident way to price it.

Who this is not for: Anyone wanting a magic number. This does arithmetic on figures you supply. It can't know your market. Treat the output as a floor to negotiate up from.