Freelance rates guide: how to set (and raise) your day rate

Setting your rate by looking at what others charge is the fastest way to undercharge. Rates posted publicly are a race to the bottom, and they ignore the most important variable: your costs and your billable time.

Here's a method that starts from your reality instead.

Step 1: Decide what you want to earn

Start with the net income you want to take home in a year, then add what it really costs to be independent:

• Social contributions and taxes — depending on your legal status, these can take a large share of revenue.
• Equipment and software — computer, licences, subscriptions, a co-working desk.
• Insurance, accounting, banking.
• Training — staying sharp is now your job, not your employer's.
• A safety buffer for slow months, sick days and late payments.

The total is your target annual revenue.

Step 2: Count your real billable days

This is where most freelancers go wrong. A year has about 220 working days once you remove weekends, public holidays and five weeks of holidays. But you won't bill all of them.

Subtract the time spent on:

• Prospecting — studies of French freelancers put it at 30–40% of an active week.
• Admin — invoicing, accounting, emails.
• Training and gaps between projects.

Many freelancers end up billing 120 to 150 days a year. If you plan on 220, your rate will be far too low.

Step 3: Do the maths

Day rate = target annual revenue ÷ billable days.

If you need €90,000 in revenue and you realistically bill 140 days, your floor is about €640 a day. Anything below that and you're financing your clients with your own savings.

Step 4: Adjust for value, not just cost

Your cost-based rate is a floor, not a ceiling. Move up when:

• the project has high business impact (a launch, a fundraising deck, a revenue-critical feature);
• you bring rare expertise or a strong track record in the client's industry;
• the timeline is urgent;
• you're talking to the decision-maker, who measures your price against the cost of the problem — not against other freelancers.

That last point matters more than most people think. A procurement team compares quotes. A founder or CTO compares your price to the value of shipping three months earlier.

Step 5: Raise your rate on a schedule

• Raise rates for new clients first — it's the easiest place to test a higher number.
• Give existing clients notice (one to two months) and tie the increase to the value you've delivered.
• Revisit your rate every year, or whenever your calendar is consistently full.

The prospecting multiplier

Remember Step 2: every hour you spend hunting for work is an hour you can't bill. Cutting prospecting time from 15 hours a week to 5 adds roughly 50 billable days a year — the equivalent of a significant raise without changing your rate at all.

That's the idea behind Freeleads: qualified opportunities and decision-maker contacts delivered every morning, so prospecting takes minutes instead of days.