What your day rate adds up to over a year
The rate calculator starts from the income you want. This one starts from the number you already charge, and tells you what kind of year it buys.
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| Days sold | — |
|---|---|
| Invoiced | — |
| Business costs | — |
| Profit before tax | — |
| Tax and contributions | — |
| Left for you | — |
Print it as a rate card
One page you can attach to an email when someone asks “what do you charge?” — day, half day, week and hour, all consistent with each other.
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The number that decides everything is not the rate
It is the count of days you sell. A day rate is a price per unit, and the unit is scarce in a way people underestimate: between holidays, gaps between projects, the days spent pitching and the days a client postpones, a solo professional who is busy sells somewhere between ten and fourteen days a month. Not twenty-two.
That single figure moves the outcome more than the price does. Twelve days a month at 500 is 72,000 invoiced. Sixteen days at 400 is 76,800 — a lower rate, a better year, and considerably more work. Which of those you prefer is a real question, and it is the question the calculator is for.
It also explains why raising the rate is usually the cheaper lever. Adding four billed days a month means finding, pitching and delivering roughly a third more work. Adding ten per cent to the rate means one conversation, and it changes the same year by a similar amount.
Where a day rate is the right unit, and where it quietly hurts
It is the right unit when the client is buying availability: a shoot, a workshop, an on-site sprint, a week of embedded work in someone's team. In those cases the day is genuinely the thing being sold, and pricing it any other way invites an argument about whether the ninth hour counted.
It hurts when the work is short and fragmented. A two-hour job priced against a day rate either becomes an awkward fraction or eats a whole day of capacity for a quarter of the money. If most of your work looks like that, an hourly rate with a minimum booking is a better fit than a day rate with exceptions.
It also hurts when you get faster. A day rate ties your income to time spent, so the reward for becoming twice as good at something is finishing early and billing less. That is the argument for fixed prices on work you have done many times before — and the reason experienced freelancers tend to quote days for the unfamiliar and a price for the familiar.
Half days and weeks: the arithmetic of the discount
A half day is not half a rate, because the cost of a half day is not half a day. The interruption takes the morning, the context switch takes part of the afternoon, and the remaining hours are rarely sellable to someone else. Somewhere around sixty per cent of the day rate reflects what it actually costs you, and the calculator uses that as a starting point you can change.
A weekly rate is where discounts get given away without being thought about. The case for a discount is real but specific: five consecutive days with one client removes four handovers, four context switches and most of the selling. If a booked week genuinely does that for you, a modest reduction is honest. If the week is five separate days spread over a month, nothing has been removed and there is nothing to discount.
The default in the rate card here is zero, deliberately. It is easier to offer a discount you had not planned than to withdraw one you published.
Reading the year the calculator gives you
The line that matters is the last one: the days a target take-home needs at this rate. If it comes out below the days you sell, you have headroom — and the interesting choice is whether to take it as money or as time, because both are legitimate and only one of them shows up in an accounting year.
If it comes out above, the gap is telling you something precise. It is not saying you are underpaid in general; it is saying that this rate and that number of days cannot produce that income. Three ways out: sell more days, charge more per day, or want less. The calculator shows the second one directly — the rate the same year would need at the days you already sell.
One caution about the take-home line: it assumes the days are invoiced and paid. A day rate does not protect you from a client who pays in ninety days, and a year that looks fine on this page can still be a year you spend borrowing against your own invoices.
See what the year looks like with the invoices in it
A rate card answers what you charge. The demo shows the part after that: quotes at those rates, the accepted ones turned into invoices, and a reports view that tells you which months actually delivered. It opens with example data already in it.
Open the demo →Questions
How many days a year can a freelancer realistically bill?
Between 120 and 170 for most solo professionals: roughly ten to fourteen a month once you remove holidays, gaps between projects, and the time spent finding the next piece of work. Anyone billing over 200 is either subcontracting, working weekends, or counting days that were partly unpaid.
Should my day rate be eight times my hourly rate?
Only if you sell eight hours in a day. The multiplier is a decision about what a day contains, not a fact — seven and eight are both common. What matters is that the two are consistent: if your day rate divided by your hours comes out below your hourly rate, you are quietly discounting every day you sell.
Do I tell the client the day rate or the total?
The total, in almost every case, with the days visible behind it. A rate invites a negotiation about the rate; a total invites a decision about the work. The rate card exists for the earlier conversation, when someone asks what you charge before there is a project to price.
Is a day rate better than a fixed price?
It is safer for you and worse for your upside. A day rate transfers the risk of the work taking longer to the client, which is why clients often prefer a fixed price — and why a fixed price pays you more when you are good and fast. Most freelancers end up using days for unfamiliar work and prices for familiar work.
What should I charge for travel days?
Something, and decide it before it comes up. Common approaches are half the day rate for travel time plus expenses at cost, or a full day when the travel consumes the day entirely. The version that causes trouble is having no policy and improvising it in an email after the trip.