You quoted a fixed price because you planned for a certain number of hours at a certain rate. The project ended, the invoice went out, and you never checked whether the plan held. Your effective hourly rate is the number that tells you: what you actually earned for every hour the project took, including the hours you never thought of as "work" (calls, email threads, the third round of revisions, chasing the invoice).
Most rate calculators on the web work forwards: they tell you what to charge. This one works backwards on a finished (or running) project, shows which kind of hours ate your margin, and gives you the price you'd need to quote next time to hit your target.
With the default numbers: 4,200 − 150 = 4,050 net. 26 + 7 + 5 + 4 + 3 = 45 hours. 4,050 ÷ 45 = 90.00 an hour, against a planned 110. If you'd only counted the 26 hours of core work you'd believe you made 155.77 an hour. The gap between those two numbers is the whole point of this exercise.
When freelancers estimate a project, they estimate the work they can picture: the pages, the screens, the words. The hours that sink a fixed price are the ones nobody pictures in advance:
None of this means you did anything wrong. It means your quote needs to price the whole project, not just the core work.
| Effective rate vs target | What it usually means | What to change |
|---|---|---|
| At or above target | Your estimate was right, or you worked faster than planned | Keep the price. Fixed fees reward speed, so don't discount it away |
| 0–20% below | Normal estimating drift | Add a 15–20% contingency line to similar quotes |
| 20–40% below | Revisions or communication weren't priced | Cap revision rounds in writing; price calls into the quote |
| More than 40% below | Scope creep: you did work that wasn't in the agreement | Use change orders for anything outside the written scope |
The calculator shows which category took the biggest share of non-core time. That's the one to fix first. If it's unbilled extras, the scope creep email scripts give you exact wording for "yes, and here's what that costs". If it's chasing payment, the late payment reminder sequence will save you hours.
You can't run this calculation without the hours, and memory is unreliable: people tend to remember the core work and forget the twenty-minute email threads. You don't need a time-tracking app. A row per work session with a date, the hours and one of the five categories above is enough. Do it for three projects and you'll know your real multiplier, for example "my projects take about 1.6× the core hours I estimate". Multiply your next estimate by that number before you price it.
The "price needed next time" figure is the honest price for this project at your target rate. Use it when you quote the next similar job:
The project quoting guide covers the rest: writing the scope, adding contingency and offering three options. If you don't know your target rate yet, start with the day rate calculator.
If an ongoing client keeps landing far below your target, raise the price on the next piece of work rather than renegotiating a finished one:
For a full rate increase across all your work, use the rate increase email templates.
This page checks one project at a time. The Freelance Client & Invoice Tracker ($12, Excel + Google Sheets, pay once) does it for all of them: log hours against each project and it shows the effective hourly rate next to the rate you planned, plus who owes you money, which reminder to send, and a weighted pipeline for next month. Your data stays in your own file.