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Hourly rate calculator: what must you charge per billable hour?

Add up what the business costs for a year, divide by the hours you can really bill, and see the rate that keeps the lights on.

The idea: rate per billable hour = (crew wages + owner pay + overhead) ÷ billable hours, then divided by one minus the profit margin you want. Billable hours are fewer than paid hours.
A Shine City crew cleaning a patio
Real crews, real rigs. This is the Shine City crew CrewBrain was built inside. Your trade is different; the price math on this page is the same.

Hourly rate calculator

The share of your revenue left as profit after wages, your pay and overhead. A 10% margin divides by 0.90; it does not just add 10% on top.
Billable hours a year—
Cost per billable hour—
Rate to charge per person-hour—
Revenue needed for the year—

The numbers above are examples only. Use your own. Overhead means everything that is not on a specific job: office staff, software, insurance, advertising, rent, vehicles that are not tied to a job.

Calculator by CrewBrain ↗

Put this calculator on your website

Paste this code into your page's HTML. It's free, needs no sign-up, and nothing typed into the calculator is sent anywhere. Want a calculator your customers can use instead? Set up the free instant estimate widget.

The short script under the frame makes it grow and shrink to fit, so nothing is cut off. If your website builder removes scripts, the frame keeps a fixed height; raise it on a narrow column. Try it on a test page.

Why billable hours, not paid hours

A crew member who is paid for 40 hours a week does not bill 40 hours. Part of the week goes to driving, loading, waiting for a customer, cleaning equipment and the quiet days between bookings. If you divide your costs by 40, you set a rate that only works when every minute is billed. Divide by the hours you truly bill, and the rate is honest. Track this with real clock-in times, not a guess.

What counts as overhead

  • Office and admin pay, rent, phone and internet
  • Software, accounting and bank fees
  • Advertising and website costs
  • Business insurance and licences
  • Vehicles and equipment that are not charged to a single job

How to use the result

  1. Take the rate to charge as the floor for an average hour of work.
  2. Check it against your job prices. Divide each price by the crew hours it needed. Any job that comes out below the floor is not paying its share.
  3. Raise prices on those jobs first. The price increase calculator shows how many customers you can afford to lose.
  4. Run the numbers again every quarter, because wages, fuel and insurance change.

The flat rate vs hourly pricing guide explains how to turn an hourly rate into a flat price per job.

Keep reading

Questions owners ask

How do I work out my hourly rate?

Add your yearly crew wages, your own pay and your overhead, divide by the billable hours you expect in a year, then divide by one minus the profit margin you want (0.90 for a 10% margin). The calculator above does the steps.

What are billable hours?

Billable hours are the hours you can charge a customer for. They leave out driving between jobs, shop time, training and days without work, unless you charge for them.

Should my own pay be in the calculation?

Yes. If your pay is left out, the business looks more profitable than it is, and you end up working for free. Put in what you would pay someone to do your job.

Is the profit margin the same as my owner pay?

No. Owner pay is a cost of running the business. The profit margin is the money left to grow the company, build a cash cushion, or cover a slow season.

Want every job priced this way, automatically?

CrewBrain works out the cost of each job, shows what it really earns, and helps you price the next one right. We accept a small group of founding members, and every application is reviewed personally.

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