Freelance Retainer Calculator

A retainer is two things at once: a monthly fee and a block of capacity you are no longer free to sell. Most retainer calculators only do the first. This one also shows what share of your month the arrangement consumes, what happens when the client goes over, and what unused hours are actually worth if they bank.

The client is not buying hours. They are buying the guarantee that you will have room for them, which means turning work away to hold that room. That is what the adjustment percentage is paying for — prepayment and predictability, not volume.

The effective rate is the number that matters and the one nobody calculates. It is the revenue divided by the hours you actually work — so an unbilled overage shows up as a rate below your own, and a quiet month shows up as a rate above it.

Every observation the results panel shows is a rule over these numbers. Nothing here is a prediction, and nothing is an opinion dressed up as analysis.

Discounting without a reason

A retainer discount is payment for prepayment and predictability. If the client is not committing to several months and is not paying up front, there is nothing to discount.

Pricing overage at the discounted rate

If an hour past the cap costs the same as an hour inside it, the cap means nothing. Overage should be at least your full undiscounted rate — which is why the default here is 1.25×.

Uncapped rollover

Let hours bank without a ceiling and a client can go quiet for four months, then arrive wanting eighty hours in one. That month’s capacity is already sold to somebody else.

Invoicing at the end of the month

A retainer billed in arrears is hourly work with extra paperwork. Invoice on the first, before the work happens — that is the part that makes it a retainer.

Forgetting the retainer is booked capacity

Twenty reserved hours are gone whether or not the client uses them. The Capacity Calculator reserves them in the schedule for exactly this reason.

At renewal, and any month where actual usage misses the reserved hours by more than about 20% in either direction. Consistent under-use makes the retainer hard to defend at renewal; consistent over-use means you are subsidising it.

This page prices a retainer once. The hard part is the other thirty days. Freshlance retainer tracking counts logged hours against the cap as they happen, flags the overrun before it becomes an awkward invoice, and keeps the reserved hours inside your capacity so a retainer cannot be double-sold.