Freelance rates should cover more than the hours spent doing client work. Include unpaid sales calls, proposals, revisions, project management, software, hardware, insurance, taxes, payment fees, time off, learning time, and the overhead needed to keep the business running.
Start with the income you need, then divide it by realistic billable hours, not total working hours. If only 20 to 25 hours each week are billable, your rate has to carry admin time, marketing, bookkeeping, and idle weeks between projects.
A practical freelance formula is: project labor cost + overhead allocation + payment fees + target net profit. For fixed-fee projects, add discovery, communication, revision risk, and scope-management time before setting the quote.
Next iteration candidate: build a dedicated freelance calculator with billable utilization, monthly income target, tax reserve, software costs, and fixed-fee project risk.