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A fixed price built from your hours estimate — and an honest look at what that price becomes per hour when the job runs long.
Pass-through costs are things you buy for the client: stock images, hosting, fonts.
The maths
Add a buffer to your hours estimate, multiply by the rate you would charge hourly, then add costs you are passing straight through. The second and third figures in the result show what the fixed price works out to per hour if the estimate holds — and if it does not.
Worked example
Forty estimated hours with a 25% buffer prices 50 hours. At $100 an hour that is $5,000, plus $500 of pass-through costs, so the quote is $5,500. If the work really takes 40 hours you earned $137.50 an hour. If it takes 80, you earned $68.75.
Replace the figures above with your own — the result updates as you type.
Read this before you quote
Questions
Fixed price when the scope is genuinely clear and you have done similar work; hourly when discovery is part of the job. A fixed price on a vague scope is a bet you are unlikely to win twice.
Bigger the less you have done the work before. On familiar work 15–20% is usually enough; on something new, 40% is not excessive. The effective rate figure shows what happens when the buffer is too small.
You do not have to, and often it is better not to. A fixed price is a price for an outcome. Breaking it into hours invites negotiation about hours instead of about value.
Split the quote rather than reducing it — commonly a third up front, a third at a milestone, a third on delivery. The business tools page covers what to use for staged invoicing.
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 →The hours you can genuinely invoice in a year — which is never the 2,080 a full-time salary is built on.