How Loomrate
Calculates Rates
Every formula behind the calculators, where the benchmark figures come from, and what they cannot tell you.
Last reviewed July 21, 2026
Most published freelance rate advice fails in the same two places: it ignores tax, and it assumes every working hour is a billable hour. Loomrate exists because correcting for those two things changes the answer by more than any negotiating tactic will. This page documents exactly how each number is produced, so you can check the reasoning rather than trust it.
The core formula
Every rate calculator on this site resolves to the same identity: the money you need to bill, divided by the hours you can actually bill for.
gross billings = (take-home target ÷ (1 − tax rate)) + business expenses
billable hours = weeks worked × hours per week × (1 − non-billable share)
minimum rate = gross billings ÷ billable hours
Two adjustments do the heavy lifting, and both are routinely skipped:
- Grossing up for tax. A $75,000 take-home target at a 27% effective rate is not $75,000 of billings - it is about $102,700, before a single business expense.
- Removing non-billable hours. A 40-hour week with 32% unpaid overhead gives 27 billable hours, not 40. The rate has to clear the whole week on the strength of those 27 hours.
Applied together on typical inputs, these two corrections raise the required rate by roughly 60-90% over the naive "income ÷ 2,080 hours" calculation that most advice uses.
Where the benchmark bands come from
The bands on each profession rate page are synthesised, not surveyed. They are assembled from four kinds of public input and reconciled against each other:
- Salary aggregators - self-reported compensation data (PayScale, ZipRecruiter, Glassdoor and similar), which is broad but skews toward employment rather than independent billing.
- Marketplace and agency rate cards - published rates for freelance and contract engagements, which reflect billing rather than salary but carry platform-specific distortion.
- Industry pricing surveys - trade-body and community surveys within each field, which capture professional norms such as licensing and revision practice.
- Typical project fees - used as a cross-check: if a stated hourly band cannot reproduce commonly quoted project prices at plausible hour counts, the band is wrong.
Where sources disagree - and they always do - the bands are widened rather than averaged. A single "average rate" hides the thing that matters most, which is how much spread there is within a field and what moves you across it.
What the numbers deliberately are not
- Not a survey. Loomrate does not run a primary rate survey, and does not present these bands as one.
- Not salary equivalents. Bands describe what independent freelancers bill clients. An employee earning the equivalent has paid holiday, employer tax contributions, and benefits that a freelance rate must cover itself.
- Not global. Every figure is US-market, 2026. Other markets differ substantially.
- Not tax advice. Tax inputs are estimates you supply. Effective rates vary by state, entity structure, deductions, and circumstance - check with an accountant.
- Not a quote. A benchmark is a sanity check on your own numbers. What a specific client will pay for a specific project is a negotiation, not a lookup.
How the profession bands are structured
Each of the 20 rate guides splits the field into four tiers rather than reporting one figure, because the spread within a profession is usually larger than the difference between professions:
| Tier | What it represents |
|---|---|
| Entry | 0-2 years independent. Execution against someone else's brief. |
| Mid | 3-6 years. Owns the work end to end, client-facing, needs little direction. |
| Senior | 7+ years. Sets direction, handles ambiguity, trusted with consequential work. |
| Specialist | Narrow expertise with thin supply - the band with the least price pressure. |
Years are a proxy, not a rule. The tier that matters is the one your work actually sits in.
How the project calculator differs
The main calculator answers a narrower question than the rate pages: not "what should I charge" but "was this specific project worth it". It applies the same identity per project rather than per year, and adds the deductions that only exist at project level - platform commission, the hours quoted versus the hours actually spent, and overhead allocated across the month rather than assumed away.
true hourly rate = (project fee
− platform fee
− tax reserve
− allocated overhead)
÷ (quoted hours + unpaid hours)
The gap between that figure and your headline rate is usually the entire argument for changing how you price.
Corrections and updates
Rate bands are reviewed and re-dated when the underlying sources move materially. The review date appears at the top of every rate page. If a band looks wrong for your field - particularly if you have primary data - that feedback is genuinely useful and welcome via the about page.
Frequently asked questions
How do you calculate a true freelance hourly rate?
Divide the gross billings you need by the hours you can actually bill. Gross billings are your take-home target grossed up for tax, plus business expenses. Billable hours are total hours worked minus the unpaid share - admin, sales, revisions. Skipping either adjustment is what makes most published rate advice too low.
Where do Loomrate rate benchmarks come from?
They are synthesised from public salary aggregators, marketplace and agency rate cards, and published industry pricing surveys, cross-checked against typical project fees for each field. They are presented as wide bands rather than single averages because experience, niche, location, and client type move real rates more than any average conveys.
Are the rate figures US-specific?
Yes. All bands describe the US market in 2026 and assume a freelancer billing clients directly. Rates in other markets differ substantially, and platform work through marketplaces typically clears below these bands after commission.
What tax rate should I use in the calculator?
Use your combined effective rate - federal, state, and self-employment tax - not your marginal bracket. Many US freelancers land somewhere around 25-30% once the self-employment component and the deduction for half of it are included, but this varies widely and is not tax advice. Check with an accountant for your situation.
Why does the calculator ask for non-billable hours?
Because it is the single biggest reason a rate that looks adequate is not. Proposals, invoicing, client email, marketing, and unpaid revisions typically consume 25-45% of a freelance week. A rate calculated against 40 billable hours when only 26 are billable is understated by more than half.
Run your own numbers
The formulas above are only useful applied to your actual situation. Every calculator on Loomrate runs in your browser - nothing is uploaded.
Open the calculator