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Freelance Project Pricing Calculator

Turn an estimate into a fixed price that survives the revisions, the meetings and the payment fee — and see what a scope change is actually worth.

Your numbers

Everything stays in your browser. Results update as you type.

The work

Currency

Changes how results are displayed. No conversion is applied.

Your hourly value

What an hour of your time is worth. If you are not sure, the Freelance Rate Calculator works it out from your income target.

Delivery hours

The actual production work: design, code, writing, whatever the client is buying.

Project management and admin hours

Briefing, file handover, status updates, invoicing, the reading you do before you start.

Meeting hours

Kick-off, reviews, the calls that follow a review. Count the preparation too.

Revision hours included

What the price covers before a change order applies. Quote a number here and put it in the contract.

Costs, risk and margin

External project expenses

Stock assets, licences, hosting, subcontractors, travel — anything you pay out for this project.

Risk and contingency

Added to labour and costs together. 10% for familiar work, 25%+ for a vague brief or a new client.

Target profit margin

A true margin — the share of the final price that is profit. Not a markup on cost, which is a smaller number.

Payment or platform fee

Card processing, a marketplace cut, currency conversion. Added on top so the fee does not come out of your margin.

Terms and pace

Deposit

Taken before work starts. 50% is standard for a new client; 30% with a milestone is common for longer work.

Hours per week on this project (optional)

Only used to estimate how long delivery takes. Leave it empty if you do not know yet.

Recommended project price

$9,213.92

60h of planned work at an effective $140.63/hr once fees and costs are taken off. Roughly 3.0 weeks at your stated pace.

Deposit: $4,606.96
Balance on delivery: $4,606.96
Total planned hours: 60h
Planned effective rate: $140.63/hr

How the price is built

Labour value$6,000

External costs$500

Contingency (10%)$650

Profit allowance (20% margin)$1,787.50

Payment fees (3%)$276.42

Final quote$9,213.92

If the scope grows

The most common way a good price turns into a bad one.

Extra revision hours

Effective rate at the agreed priceDown from $140.63/hr$129.81/hr

Change order worth$708.76

Revised total$9,922.68

Note: A price is a planning aid, not a prediction of what a client will accept. This one tells you what the work has to be worth for the project to be worth taking.

What this calculator does

It converts an estimate into a fixed price, with every part of the number visible. Four categories of hour, the costs you will pay out, a contingency, the margin you want to keep and the fee the payment processor takes before the money reaches you.

Fixed-fee work fails in one of two ways: the estimate missed hours that were always going to happen — reviews, revisions, handover — or the margin was arithmetic that looked right and was not. This handles both.

How the calculation works

totalHours = delivery + admin + meetings + revisions

labourValue = totalHours × hourlyValue

baseValue = labourValue + externalExpenses

riskAdjusted = baseValue × (1 + contingency)

priceBeforeFees = riskAdjusted ÷ (1 − margin)

recommendedPrice = priceBeforeFees ÷ (1 − fee)

deposit = recommendedPrice × depositPercent

balance = recommendedPrice − deposit

Margin is not markup

A 20% markup on $7,150 of cost gives $8,580, and the profit in that price is $1,430 — which is 16.7% of it, not 20%. To actually keep 20% of the price, the cost has to be divided by 0.8, which gives $8,937.50. This calculator divides. Over a year of projects the difference between the two is about one project’s worth of profit.

Why the fee is added on top

A 3% processing fee taken out of an $8,937.50 invoice leaves $8,669. Quoting $8,937.50 ÷ 0.97 = $9,213.92 means the fee comes off and your number survives intact. The same applies to a marketplace cut or a currency conversion spread.

A worked example

Starting from

Hourly value: $100
Delivery / admin / meetings / revisions: 40 / 6 / 4 / 10 h
External expenses: $500
Contingency: 10%
Profit margin: 20%
Payment fee: 3%

1
Total hours
40 + 6 + 4 + 10 = 60h
2
Labour value
60 × 100 = $6,000
3
With expenses
6,000 + 500 = $6,500
4
Contingency
6,500 × 1.10 = $7,150
5
Margin gross-up
7,150 ÷ 0.80 = $8,937.50
6
Fee gross-up
8,937.50 ÷ 0.97 = $9,213.92

Quote $9,213.92. A 50% deposit is $4,606.96, and the project has to be delivered in 60 hours for the margin to survive.

Common mistakes

Pricing only the delivery hours

In the example above, delivery is 40 of the 60 hours. Pricing the 40 and absorbing the other 20 turns a $153/hour project into a $102/hour one before anything goes wrong.

Leaving revisions undefined

“Revisions until you are happy” is an unpriced, unbounded commitment. Name the number of hours or rounds the price includes, and use the scope panel above to work out what a change order is worth when it is exceeded.

Treating contingency as padding to be negotiated away

It is not padding. It is the statistical cost of estimates being estimates, and the first thing to drop when a client pushes on price — which is why the projects you discount are the ones that overrun.

Ignoring the fee

Three percent sounds small. On $150,000 of annual project revenue it is $4,500, which is more than most freelancers spend on software all year.

When to recalculate

Before every quote, and again whenever the brief changes materially. Afterwards, run the finished project through the Effective Hourly Rate Calculator to find out how close the estimate was. Two or three of those and your hour estimates start being worth something.

Where Freshlance fits

A price built on 60 hours is a promise about 60 hours. Freshlance estimates and invoicing carry the estimate into the project, the tracked time reports against it while the work is live, and scope changes get approved with a number attached rather than absorbed.

Questions

Should I show the client this breakdown?

Usually not in full. Clients buy an outcome, and an itemised labour cost invites negotiation line by line. Keep the breakdown for yourself and quote the total, with a short scope statement saying what is included — particularly the revision hours.

What contingency percentage should I use?

Around 10% for work you have done many times for a client you know. 20–30% when the brief is vague, the stack is unfamiliar or there are several stakeholders. If you find yourself wanting more than 40%, the project needs a paid discovery phase before it needs a price.

What is a reasonable profit margin for freelance work?

The margin here is the cushion above what your time is already worth — your hourly value has your income and overheads in it. 15–25% is a common range. It is what pays for the work that never becomes a project: the pitches you lose and the proposals nobody answers.

How do I handle a client who wants a lower price?

Reduce the scope, not the price. Take hours out of the estimate and say which deliverable went with them. Discounting the same scope tells the client the first number was invented, which makes every later number negotiable too.

Should the deposit be part of the total or on top?

Part of it. The deposit and the balance here add up to the quoted price. A deposit charged on top of the full price is a rush fee wearing a deposit costume, and clients notice.

Note. Pricing estimates are planning aids. They cannot determine what a particular client is willing to pay, and this is not financial advice.

Take the answer into a document

The calculator gives you the number. These are the free, editable files that put it in front of a client — no signup, Microsoft and OpenDocument formats.

Freelance Quote & Estimate Template

Available formats: DOCXODTXLSXODSPDF

A costed estimate for hourly, fixed-fee or milestone work, with labour, expenses, risk contingency, discount, tax and a deposit.

Freelance Proposal Template

Available formats: DOCXODTPDF

A client-ready project proposal: the problem, the approach, the deliverables, the timeline, the price and the payment schedule.