One Page Co: The Freelance Rate Calculator — US, UK & Canada
What you have to charge is not the same as what you would like to charge.Most freelancers set a rate by taking the salary they used to earn, dividing it by something like 220 working days, deciding the number looks low, and rounding up. Then they work a full year at that rate and end up with less money than the job they left.This is the arithmetic instead. It works backwards from the money you need to keep — through tax, through mandatory contributions, through the hours you can actually bill — to the rate below which you are losing money.The part that matters most is the utilisation checkAlmost every rate calculator assumes forty billable hours a week. Nobody working alone bills forty hours a week. Proposals, sales calls, invoicing, chasing invoices, bookkeeping, scoping, and the reading you do to stay employable are all real work, and a client pays for none of it.Fifty to sixty per cent is normal for one person. This calculator shows what your floor becomes at 40, 50, 60, 70 and 80 per cent utilisation as five live columns, side by side.On the worked examples, the spread between the top and bottom of that range is a factor of two on the same target income. Which means the rate you have been quoting is not really a judgement about your skill. It is a bet on a number you have probably never written down.It handles three markets properlyUnited States — federal brackets, self-employment tax on 92.35% of profit with half deductible, the QBI deduction, and your own state rate as an input rather than a hardcoded guess. The top band is lower than the one beneath it, because the Social Security portion stops at the wage base. Most calculators get that backwards.United Kingdom — income tax and Class 4 National Insurance, including the 62% band between £100,000 and £125,140 that the personal allowance taper creates. Almost no freelancer knows that band exists until they land in it.Canada — federal and provincial brackets, the Ontario surtax, and CPP including the second tier. Ontario ships filled in; other provinces are an editable row.Every tax rate is visible and editableNothing is buried inside a formula. Each figure sits in an Assumptions table tagged with the tax year it came from and the source it came from. When rates change you edit four numbers and every scenario follows. That is the difference between a template that lasts and one that is quietly wrong by April.What you getRate calculator — target take-home to floor rate, recommended rate, day rate, week rate, monthly retainer and a project starting price. Model current, target and what-if side by side, as many scenarios as you want.Utilisation reality check — your floor at 40, 50, 60, 70 and 80 per cent as five visible columns, so you can see what the assumption is costing you before you quote.Editable Assumptions table — every rate, threshold and contribution for all three markets, tagged by tax year, with the components and the simplifications written out in plain English.Market benchmarks — indicative day-rate ranges across eight disciplines in all three markets, plus what moves you to the top of each range, so you can sanity-check your floor against what buyers actually pay.Pricing Decisions guide and a buyer's guide PDF — day rate versus project price, the script for raising rates on existing clients, what to do when your floor exceeds the market, and the three most common underpricing mistakes.Three complete worked examples ship with it, one per market, so you can watch it function before you enter a single number of your own.What this is notA planning tool, not tax advice. It assumes one person, one income source, no dependants, no credits and no pension contributions, and it tells you exactly what it has simplified rather than hiding it. Your actual return will differ. Use the output to decide what to charge. Verify what you owe with an accountant in your own jurisdiction.Tax years: US 2026, UK 2026/27, Canada 2026.Built for Notion. Duplicate it into your own workspace and it is yours.$39. Less than one hour at the rate it will probably tell you to charge.
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