How much should you charge as a freelancer?

Most freelancers pick a number that sounds reasonable and hope. Then they discover that “reasonable” did not account for taxes, gaps between clients, unpaid admin, or the third of every project that quietly becomes free work. Here is a framework that fixes that.

1. Start from the income you actually need

Work backwards. Take the annual income you want, add tax, software, and a buffer for quiet months. That is your real target, not the take-home daydream.

2. Divide by billable hours, not total hours

You do not bill 40 hours a week. Between admin, pitching, and downtime, 20 to 25 billable hours is realistic. Divide your target by those, not by a full week, or you will systematically underprice yourself.

3. Price the value, then sanity-check the hour

Hourly is a floor, not the ceiling. If your work makes or saves a client far more than your time costs, price the outcome (a project fee) and use the hourly number only to check you are not underwater.

4. Account for the work that leaks

The number one reason freelancers earn less than their rate suggests is not their rate. It is leakage: the extra revisions you absorbed, the scope that crept, the invoices that paid 40 days late or never. You can have a great rate and still lose a third of it to work you did but never billed.

5. Protect the rate you set

Setting the number is half the job. Keeping it means billing for every change, getting paid on time, and knowing which clients and platforms are actually worth your hours. That is the unglamorous side of freelancing, and it is where the money you already earned gets quietly won or lost.

ClientRoost is built for exactly that side: track which proposals win, bill for every scope change, and chase invoices automatically, so the rate you set is the rate you keep.