This contractor hourly rate calculator divides the salary you want plus your yearly overhead by the hours you can bill, then adds your profit markup — the rate you need to charge to cover the year.
Hourly rate to charge: $110.77 an hour.
Billed 1,300 times a year, that hour brings in $144,000: your $80,000 salary, $40,000 of overhead and $24,000 of profit.
Add the salary you want to pay yourself to a year of business overhead — truck, insurance, tools, software, marketing, office. Divide that by the hours you can bill in a year to get your break-even rate, then add your profit markup. With this calculator’s starting values, ($80,000 + $40,000) ÷ 1,300 hours is $92 an hour to break even, and a 20% markup makes it $111.
Start from 2,080 — 40 hours a week for 52 weeks — and take off what you can’t bill: drive time between jobs, estimates, admin, callbacks, holidays and time off. The reliable way to find your own number is to track two to four weeks of your time and scale it up. The calculator’s 1,300 is a starting value, not a benchmark.
The $120,000 of salary and overhead is spread over the hours you bill: at 1,300 hours, each has to carry $92.31 before any profit.
The calculator shows 1.5 times your rate as a reference for after-hours, weekend and emergency calls. Some contractors charge more, or set a minimum call-out fee. Whatever you choose, state it before you take the job.
A rate is only earned on the hours that reach an invoice. Business Genie has GPS time tracking, job costing, and invoicing with online payments, on the web and in the iOS and Android app.
Free for a month · No card to startNo credit card to start · Free setup