Free charge-out / hourly rate calculator for Australian sole traders and contractors. Start from the take-home pay you want and back-solve the hourly rate you need to charge — after grossing up for an income-tax buffer, provisioning 12% super, covering your annual business overheads, and accounting for the realistic billable hours you can actually invoice. Shows your hourly rate, an 8-hour day rate, and the total revenue you need to bill each year, week, and month.
What you want in your pocket after tax
52 minus holidays, sick days, downtime
Hours you actually invoice, not hours worked
Insurance, software, vehicle, tools, phone
Super Guarantee is 12% from 1 Jul 2025
Set aside for tax — 25–30% is typical
Charge-Out Rate
$84.44/hr
$116,533 revenue / yr
Day Rate (8 hrs)
$675.56/day
1,380 billable hrs / yr
Per Hour
$84.44
Per Day
$675.56
Revenue / Week
$2,533
Revenue / Month
$9,711
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Setting a price when you go out on your own is one of the hardest calls a contractor makes. Charge too little and you work yourself into the ground for an employee's wage; charge too much and you lose the job. The honest way to set a rate is to start from the take-home pay you actually want, then build back up through tax, super, overheads, and — crucially — the fact that you can only ever bill a slice of the hours you work.
The plain-text formula this calculator uses is:
Say you want $70,000 in your pocket, you can bill 46 weeks a year at 30 hours a week, your overheads (insurance, software, vehicle, tools, phone) come to $12,000, you set aside 12% for super, and you hold back 25% for tax:
Notice the rate is roughly double the $33/hour an employee on $70,000 might quote in their head. That gap is real — it's the tax, super, overheads, and unbilled time an employer normally absorbs.
The single biggest lever is your billable weeks and hours. You might work 40 hours, but quoting, invoicing, chasing payment, marketing, and travel eat into that, and you take holidays and get sick. If your billable hours drop, your required rate rises sharply to hit the same take-home — which is why utilisation, not just price, decides whether a solo business is sustainable.
As a sole trader nobody pays you super and no tax is withheld from your invoices. The employer Super Guarantee is 12% from 1 July 2025, and a 25–30% tax buffer is a sensible holding rate for middle incomes — adjust it using our income tax calculator once you know your full picture. Building both into your rate means you can pay yourself a wage and still meet your obligations when they fall due.
There is no fixed answer — it depends on your target take-home, how many hours you can actually bill, your overheads, and how much you set aside for super and tax. As a rule of thumb, a sole trader can only bill 50–70% of the hours they work (the rest goes on admin, quoting, and travel), so your charge-out rate has to be well above an employee's equivalent hourly wage. Enter your numbers above to back-solve the rate that hits your goal.
An employee's wage doesn't include super, annual leave, sick leave, public holidays, tools, insurance, a vehicle, software, or downtime — their employer absorbs all of that. As a contractor you pay it yourself out of your rate, and you can only bill a fraction of the hours you actually work. That's why a $40/hour employee equivalent often needs an $80–$120/hour charge-out rate to end up with the same take-home.
A full-time year is about 1,920 hours (48 weeks × 40 hours), but almost nobody bills all of it. After unpaid admin, quoting, invoicing, marketing, travel, and gaps between jobs, most solo operators bill 1,200–1,500 hours a year. This calculator lets you set billable weeks and billable hours per week directly, so you can model a realistic — not theoretical — utilisation.
Yes. As a sole trader you aren't paid super by anyone, so if you want to match an employee's total package you need to set aside your own — the employer Super Guarantee is 12% from 1 July 2025. This calculator provisions super as a percentage of your pre-tax billings so the rate it produces leaves room for you to contribute to your own fund.
Sole traders pay tax at individual marginal rates, and no tax is withheld from your invoices, so you should hold a buffer back from every payment. A common starting point is 25–30% for incomes in the middle brackets, but it varies with your total income, the 2% Medicare levy, and any HELP/HECS debt. Use our income tax calculator for a precise figure, then plug that effective rate in here as the tax buffer.
A day rate is simply your hourly rate multiplied by the number of hours in a working day — this tool uses 8 hours, so a $100/hour rate is a $800 day rate. Many contractors quote a day rate for longer engagements because it's simpler to budget and signals a full-day commitment. Either way the underlying maths is the same: cover your take-home, tax, super, and overheads across the hours you can bill.
Sources & methodology
This calculator back-solves your charge-out rate from a target take-home. It grosses your take-home up for an income-tax buffer (take-home ÷ (1 − tax %)), adds a super provision (a % of that pre-tax income) and your annual overheads to get the total revenue you must bill, then divides by your billable hours per year (billable weeks × billable hours/week). The day rate is the hourly rate × 8 hours. Everything is computed in your browser — nothing you enter is stored or sent to a server.
Authoritative sources
Reviewed by Bishal Shrestha — Founder of OneBookPlus, 10+ years building tools with Australian tax-agent and BAS-agent practices. Last reviewed and updated: June 2026.
Disclaimer: This tool provides estimates only and is not professional advice. For decisions that affect your tax, finances, or compliance position, consult a registered professional.
OneBookPlus handles invoicing, GST tracking, BAS prep, and ATO lodgement automatically.