Turn your income goal, working capacity, hidden time, and delivery costs into a sustainable hourly rate, project fee, package price, or monthly retainer.
Start with the personal income and operating costs the business needs to support.
Separate total working time from the hours you can actually sell.
Compare different offers without changing your underlying income and capacity plan.
A service price must fund the work clients see and the business activity they do not. Proposals, marketing, administration, finance, software, learning, communication, and quiet periods all exist even when they are not shown as line items.
This calculator creates an internal hourly baseline from the full annual plan, then applies it consistently to hourly work, projects, packages, and retainers. The result is a starting point for a commercial decision—not a rule that ignores value or demand.
Begin with desired personal income, allow for tax, add annual operating expenses, and decide whether the business needs a safety or reinvestment buffer. This creates the revenue target your prices must collectively support.
Dividing an annual target by every working hour produces a rate that cannot fund sales, marketing, administration, and downtime. Use the proportion of time that can realistically be sold to clients.
Project and package pricing should include preparation, meetings, communication, revisions, reporting, and wrap-up—not only the obvious production hours. Add direct costs after allocating the internal rate.
Cost-based pricing protects sustainability, but it does not measure the commercial value of an outcome. Strong positioning, expertise, urgency, risk, intellectual property, and demand can justify a higher price.
Know what is included before using the result in a proposal.
A sustainable price needs to cover business expenses, non-billable working time, tax planning, the owner's desired take-home income, and a buffer for uncertainty. It should also reflect the value, complexity, risk, and market position of the offer rather than relying on costs alone.
Service-business owners are rarely paid for every working hour. Sales, marketing, proposals, administration, learning, meetings, finance, and business development still need to be funded. The billable-time percentage spreads your income target across the hours that can actually be sold.
Include software, insurance, accounting, marketing, equipment, coworking or premises, training, subscriptions, contractors not tied to one offer, and other costs required to operate. Do not include a direct project or package cost twice.
This increases the revenue target to allow for uncertainty, quiet periods, small overruns, reinvestment, or profit retained in the business. It is not a formal accounting profit-margin calculation. Use a percentage that suits your risk and business maturity.
The calculator multiplies your sustainable internal hourly rate by estimated delivery hours, adds your scope-creep allowance, and then adds direct costs such as contractors, travel, licenses, or specialist assets.
Include every delivery hour across all sessions or deliverables, plus preparation, communication, reporting, revisions, and administration. The recommended package price also adds any direct package cost you enter.
Enter the recurring delivery hours, meetings, communication, reporting, and administration required each month. Add monthly costs paid specifically for that client. Clearly define scope, response times, rollover rules, and work outside the retainer in the agreement.
No. It is a financial planning baseline, not a market valuation or financial recommendation. Demand, experience, outcomes, urgency, competition, positioning, legal requirements, taxes, and client value can support a different price. Review the estimate alongside real sales evidence.