Freelance Rate Setting Worksheet
Set a rate from costs and capacity, not guesses.
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[VERIFY] is an editorial flag, not a blank to fill. Wherever the prompt shows [VERIFY], check that item against a reliable source before you use it.
Help me set my freelance rate. My service and market: [SERVICE_MARKET]. Target annual income before tax, if I choose to share it: [INCOME_TARGET]. Expenses I expect (software, equipment, insurance, training), as I estimate them: [EXPENSES]. Billable hours I can realistically work per week and weeks off: [HOURS_WEEKS]. Walk me through the calculation in a table: income target plus expenses plus time for admin and unpaid work, divided by billable hours, giving a floor rate. Show the effect of a 20 percent lower utilisation. Then discuss project-based pricing and how to convert my floor rate into a quote with a margin of error. Provide questions to ask to learn what comparable work earns, without relying on invented figures. Tell me to ask an accountant about taxes, social insurance and business structure [VERIFY]. Add a worked example with invented numbers for a freelancer who wants to cover expenses of 9,000 and earn a target of 40,000 with 900 billable hours, showing the floor rate and how it moves when utilisation drops, labelled as an illustration. Then add a section called Sanity Checks. Compare my floor rate with three signals I can gather without invented data: what three comparable freelancers publish openly, what clients said about budget in past conversations, and what my last five projects actually paid per hour once unpaid time was counted. Show how to set three rates from the floor: a minimum I would accept, a standard quote rate, and a premium for rush or complex work, with the reasoning for each. Provide a plan for raising rates for new clients first and for existing clients with three months' notice, and write a short message announcing a rate change in under 100 words. Close with the questions I should answer honestly before finalising: how reliable is my pipeline, and how many weeks could I cover if work stopped? Keep the advice practical and modest: no income promises, no assumptions about my business structure, and a [VERIFY] tag with [JURISDICTION] on anything that depends on regulation or tax.
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