rate floor / year 3 · free workflow
Work Out the Rate Below Which Freelance Loses Money — Free
Total your real annual costs and the hours you can actually sell, and the ledger shows the headroom, so a rate that quietly loses money is visible before you quote it again.
What this replaces
Freelance rate advice compares you to other people's rates. This sets your own annual costs against the hours you can actually sell, so the floor is your number, and a rate beneath it is visible as negative headroom.
Tool note. This runs entirely in your browser — no account, no upload, no paid API key. Google NotebookLM is named as the free source-grounded reading path for the material you paste; its published free-tier terms were checked on 2026-09-13 and can change.
The four passes
Collect the smallest useful input
Your annual costs including tax and equipment, plus the billable hours you can sell.
Let the ledger set them side by side
Each figure is counted and the final row shows the headroom.
Count only hours you can invoice
Admin, holiday, and pitching are not billable, however long they take.
Rerun when costs change
A new laptop or a tax band shift moves the floor more than people expect.
Try it on the rate floor / year 3
The board below runs in your browser. It opens with a worked sample so the result is visible before you paste anything; switch scenarios, edit the text, or reset to the sample.
running the sample…
first-load · sample values are illustrative, not verified facts
Everything you paste stays in this browser tab. Nothing is uploaded, there is no account, and no request leaves the page to generate the result; clearing site data removes anything saved locally. Because this topic can involve personal detail, delete names and identifiers you do not need before you paste.
What breaks, and what to do
Costs excluding tax
The floor is meaningless without it; include everything.
Hours guessed at full time
Subtract holiday, sickness, admin, and business development honestly.
Project work priced per day
The ledger works in hours; convert before you compare.
Boundary — what this does not do
This page arranges what you enter into talking points and a record. It does not give legal advice, does not negotiate for you, and guarantees no outcome or offer.
Confirm contract terms, pay data, and anything binding with HR in writing or a qualified adviser before you rely on it.
Go deeper — Rate Floor
The free board above is the whole loop. The paid tier keeps the arranged output so you do not rebuild it.
- Printable ledger with the floor rate worked out in large type — estimate: 20 minutes saved per year, basis: 5 figures re-tabulated at ~4 minutes each
- Saved local history across years — estimate: 14 minutes saved per year, basis: re-entering costs and hours at ~14 minutes
$5 one-time