Freelance Rate Calculator [Free Google Sheet]

Background

Every freelancer, myself included, should be charging more for their services.

I spoke with a fellow freelancer who does almost the exact same work that I do and was charging a third of my rates. Charging more for your services has a few advantages:

You’re sending a signal that you’re good at what you do (otherwise how could you justify those rates?)

It weeds out price-sensitive clients that in my experience are more time consuming to deal with

You earn more per client so you don’t need to take on as many active clients at one time (so you can do better work for your current clients)

But people are inherently bad at valuing themselves, and this is most common with new freelancers.

So I built this free calculator to help.

What’s Inside

A Google Sheet calculator with two methods of arriving at your rates rates:

1️⃣ Tops down: starting with your current (or goal) annual salary

2️⃣ Bottoms up: starting with your current monthly expenses