Freelance Income Calculator
How much work do you need each month?
Put in what you need to live on and what you charge. This tells you how much work it takes to cover it, and whether that much work is even possible. Works whether you charge for the whole job or by the hour.
How do you charge?
You quote one price for the whole job.
Put your numbers in to see how much work you need.
Your numbers
Use one kind of money for everything here. Changing it does not turn your numbers into another kind of money.
Everything you have to pay in a month. Rent, food, transport, data, power, your tools. If a bill comes once a year, divide it by 12.
Extra to put away
Money on top for savings, for tax, and for slow months. This is added to what you need. It is not tax worked out for you.
A normal job, not your biggest or your smallest.
Money you pay out for that job. People you bring in, travel, music or footage you buy. Do not count the bills you already added above.
Be honest about your time. This checks whether the answer is work you can really do.
Do you charge VAT?
VAT is the tax you add to your price, take from your client, and send on to the government. Say yes only if you have a VAT number. That money passes through you. It is never yours to spend.
What this means
Your numbers will show up here.
How this works
Nothing clever is going on. Here is every step, and every guess it makes for you.
The sums
If you charge for the whole job
- What you need to earn
- what you need to live on, plus the extra you put away
- What is yours from one job
- what you charge, less any VAT sitting inside that price
- What you keep from one job
- what is yours from it, less what that job costs you
- Jobs you need
- what you need to earn, shared by what you keep from one job, rounded up
- Money in
- jobs you need, times what is yours from one job
- What those jobs cost you
- jobs you need, times what one costs
- Money left
- money in, less what those jobs cost you
- What your client pays
- your price, and the VAT on top of it if you add it on top
If you charge by the hour
- Hours you can charge for in a year
- hours you can charge for each week, times the weeks you work
- What you need in a year
- what you need to earn each month, times 12
- The least you can charge
- what you need in a year, shared by the hours you can charge for, rounded up. If VAT sits inside your price, it goes on before the rounding
- A day
- your hourly price, times 8
- A week
- your hourly price, times the hours you charge for in a week
- What your client pays an hour
- your hourly price, and the VAT on top of it if you add it on top
What it guesses for you
- It works as if every job pays you about the same and costs you about the same. Real months are not that even. Some are busy, some are quiet.
- You cannot do half a job, so the number of jobs is always rounded up. Four and a bit means five.
- An hourly price is rounded up too. Rounded down, you would come up short every month.
- The extra you put away sits on top of what you need. It is not tax worked out for you.
- What is left over is before tax and anything else you owe. It is not money you get to keep in full.
- VAT is money you collect for the government. It is never counted as yours, whichever way you charge it.
- Choosing a different kind of money only changes how the numbers are written. Nothing is swapped into another kind of money here.
An example you can check
Charging for the whole job
Say you need NGN 400,000 a month to live on. You charge NGN 150,000 for a job. Each job costs you NGN 50,000 to do. You want to put away 20% on top.
The 20% takes what you need to NGN 480,000. Each job leaves you NGN 100,000 once you pay what it costs. That is 4.8 jobs, and you cannot do 0.8 of a job, so it goes up to five.
Five jobs bring in NGN 750,000 and cost you NGN 250,000, which leaves NGN 500,000. That covers the NGN 480,000 you need, with NGN 20,000 to spare.
Now tell it you can only do four jobs a month. It will say so, and tell you each job has to be worth NGN 170,000 instead.
Charging by the hour
Same NGN 400,000 a month and the same 20% on top, so NGN 480,000 a month, which is NGN 5,760,000 for the year.
You can charge for 25 hours a week. Not 40: the rest goes on finding work, sending invoices and answering people. You work 46 weeks, because you take holidays. That is 1,150 hours you can actually sell in a year.
NGN 5,760,000 shared by 1,150 hours is NGN 5,009 an hour. A day is NGN 40,072. If you charge NGN 2,500 an hour today, it will tell you that you are NGN 2,509 short on every single hour you work.
If you charge VAT
Say you have a VAT number and you charge 7.5%. Add it on top and your client pays NGN 161,250 for the same job. NGN 11,250 of that is the government’s. You still keep NGN 100,000, and five jobs still covers you.
Now say your NGN 150,000 price already has the VAT inside it. NGN 10,465.12 of every job was never yours. You keep NGN 89,534.88 once the NGN 50,000 cost comes out, and the same bills now take six jobs a month instead of five. That is the one this tool is really here to catch.
Press “Fill it with an example” and you will see the numbers at the top of this page. It loads with no VAT, so turn it on yourself to see the rest.
This is a guess to help you plan. It works as if every job pays you about the same. It cannot tell you how much work is out there, when people will actually pay you, or whether you have the time to do it all.
Inspired by my reading of The Freelance Manifesto. Built by ASG Visuals.
Got your number? Now go and earn it.
If some of that work could be video, tell me what you are making and I will tell you what it takes.