Free · No sign-up · Nothing saved
The hours you can genuinely invoice in a year — which is never the 2,080 a full-time salary is built on.
Billable percentage is the share of working time a client pays for.
The maths
Take 52 weeks, subtract the weeks you will not work, multiply by the hours you actually work in a week, then keep only the share of that time a client is paying for. The remainder goes on admin, invoicing, marketing, proposals, and the work you do not win.
Worked example
Six weeks off leaves 46 working weeks. At 40 hours a week that is 1,840 hours, but if 60% of your time is billable you can only invoice 1,104 of them.
Replace the figures above with your own — the result updates as you type.
Read this before you quote
Questions
For a solo freelancer handling their own marketing, sales, and admin, 50–65% is typical. Anything above 75% sustained usually means either an inbound pipeline someone else built or unpaid overtime absorbing the difference.
No. If the client is not paying for those hours they are non-billable, however necessary they are. Counting them makes the billable share look better and your rate floor look lower than it is.
Because it is a multiplier on everything. Dropping from 1,400 billable hours to 1,100 cuts annual revenue by more than a 20% rate rise adds back. Most underpricing is an hours problem wearing a rate costume.
No — it measures time, not collection. Late and unpaid invoices are a separate risk, and the usual answer is deposits and staged payments rather than a higher billable share.
Next step
The hourly rate below which the work costs you money — calculated from what you need to take home, not from what feels reasonable.
Open calculator →Your hourly rate expressed as a day rate, a week, a month, and a year, so a quote and a plan use the same number.
Open calculator →How much work you could afford to lose after raising your rates — usually far more than the fear suggests.