Free calculator · Pricing and Revenue
Agency Hourly Rate Calculator.
For agency owners and freelance developers. Enter your overhead, your target profit and each role's real utilisation, and get a rate per role — plus which roles do not cover their own salary, which a blended rate hides.
Enter every figure below in this currency. Nothing is converted, this works from your own numbers.
Rent, software, insurance, accounting, non-billable salaries. If you enter salaries per role below, leave them out here.
What is left over after overhead and before tax.
One row per role, not per person. Roles sit at different points on a rate card and carry very different utilisation — a PM who is 45% billable and a developer who is 70% billable cannot share one blended rate without one of them subsidising the other.
Rate card floor
AED 38 blended
To cover AED 8,000 overhead plus AED 4,000 profit a month from 312 billable hours. The blended figure is the average; the rates that matter are per role, below.
A floor, not a market rate. Quoting under it does not make you competitive, it makes the business subsidise the client. Rates are solved across the whole team at once, because every role shares the same overhead: fix one and the others move. If the floor lands above what your market pays, the fix is higher utilisation or lower overhead, not a lower rate.
Estimate done
Want the real number for your project?
An estimate works from typical scope. A quotation works from yours. Send this breakdown over and you get a fixed price back, from the person who would do the work, within one business day.
What this tool measures
Most agencies and freelancers set their rate by looking at what someone else charges. That number carries none of your costs, none of your overhead and none of your utilisation, so it is at best a coincidence if it works.
This goes the other way. Overhead plus the profit you need, divided by the hours that genuinely get billed, is the rate below which the business subsidises its clients. Everything above that floor is a market question; everything below it is arithmetic that does not care how competitive you want to be.
It builds a rate card by role rather than returning one blended number, because a blended rate hides the two facts that decide whether an agency is profitable: roles sit at different points on the card, and they carry very different utilisation. A project manager who is 45 percent billable and a developer who is 70 percent billable cannot share a rate without one of them subsidising the other, and the blended figure is exactly what stops you seeing which.
How to use it
Overhead means everything the business pays whether or not the phone rings: salaries including your own, rent, software, insurance, accounting, retained contractors. Leaving your own salary out is the most common error and it makes the floor look survivable when it is not.
Count only genuinely billable people. A founder doing sales and hiring is not billable time, however many hours they work.
Utilisation is the number that does the most damage when it is guessed. Sixty to seventy percent is normal for a small agency. Above eighty is rare, usually temporary, and generally a sign of a team that is about to lose someone.
How to read the result
The hourly figure is a floor, not a price. Quoting under it does not make you competitive, it makes the business fund the client's project, and it does so invisibly until a quiet quarter arrives.
The day rate is the same number in the unit clients think in. It is worth checking against what your market pays, because a floor above the market rate is real information: it means the constraint is cost structure or utilisation, not pricing.
The billable-hours line is usually the uncomfortable one. Most teams discover they are selling far fewer hours than they thought, and that gap is where the rate pressure is actually coming from.
What to do next
If the floor is above what your market pays, do not lower the rate. Raise utilisation, cut overhead, or move some work to a fixed price where efficiency accrues to you rather than to the client.
Then check your last five projects against this figure. The pattern is nearly always the same: two paid well, one broke even and two were subsidised, and the subsidised ones were the ones scoped loosely.
Questions people ask
Should I quote hourly or fixed price?
Fixed price for defined work, once you can scope it reliably, because getting faster then benefits you. Hourly for genuinely open-ended work. This rate is the input to both: a fixed price is this number multiplied by an honest estimate, plus contingency.
What utilisation should I aim for?
Sixty-five to seventy-five percent sustainably. Chasing higher means cutting the sales, admin and internal work that keeps the pipeline full, which raises utilisation this quarter and empties it next.
Does this work for a solo freelancer?
Yes. Set billable people to one and put your own target salary in overhead rather than in profit. The floor that comes out is usually higher than most freelancers charge, which is the point.
Should the floor include tax?
This is a pre-tax figure. Add your corporate tax rate to the target profit if you want the number to survive contact with the tax bill rather than merely the year.
Where to go from here
- Coaching Rate Calculator — the same arithmetic for someone selling their own time rather than a team's.
- Retainer vs Project Decision Tool — the breakeven that decides whether to sell this rate hourly or as standing capacity.
- Freelancer and Agency Quote Comparator — what a complete quote at this rate has to state, from the buyer's side of the table.
The guide behind this tool
Built by GoDesign FZE, who run a services business in this market.
Get in touch
Want someone to just do this part?
The tool is free and stays free. If you would rather hand the work over, tell us what you are dealing with and you get a straight answer on scope, cost and timeline.
- You own everythingRepository, hosting and domain credentials sit in your name from day one, not handed over at the end.
- A written timelineMilestone dates are agreed in writing before work starts, so you always know what ships next.
- One business dayEvery enquiry gets a reply from the person who would scope the work, not a sales sequence.
Media City, Dubai, UAE · DHA Phase 2, Islamabad, Pakistan
Would rather type than fill in a form?
Message on WhatsApp