Pricing your own work should not be a guessing game

The problem this is built around

Most people who work for themselves set their rate once, early on, from a gut feeling or a number that sounded reasonable at the time. Then they rarely revisit it. Meanwhile tax, business expenses and the hours that never get billed quietly consume what looked like a decent rate on paper.

The result is common and rarely discussed openly: skilled, busy people working full weeks and still not making what they need. Not because they are bad at what they do, but because nobody ever walked them through the arithmetic.

What The True Rate does

The core of the site is a free calculator that works out the hourly rate you actually need to charge once your income target, expenses, tax and realistic billable hours are accounted for. It compares that figure against market benchmarks adjusted for profession, experience, region and specialisation, so you are not pricing in a vacuum.

Around the calculator sit four more tools and 15 guides covering the parts of independent work that arrive without an onboarding manual: raising your rate, handling scope creep, quarterly tax, contracts and deposits, chasing late invoices, budgeting around inconsistent income, and the less-discussed emotional side of pricing yourself.

How the numbers are produced

Two kinds of figures appear on this site, and they are not equally solid.

Tax calculations use published data. United States federal tax comes from the real 2026 IRS brackets and standard deductions, self-employment tax uses the statutory 15.3 percent on 92.35 percent of net profit, and state rates come from published top marginal rates. These are reproducible from primary sources.

Rate benchmarks are our own estimates. They are not survey data, and we do not present them as such. The methodology page sets out exactly how they are derived, how confident you should be in them, and what they cannot tell you.

Who writes this

The guides are researched and written by the The True Rate editorial team, and reviewed whenever the underlying data changes. Where something is a general practice rather than a rule, we say so. Where a figure depends on your jurisdiction, we say that too, and point you to an accountant rather than guessing on your behalf.

We would rather be useful and clearly bounded than authoritative-sounding and vague. If you find something wrong or out of date, the contact page reaches us directly, and corrections get made.

Who this is for

Freelancers, consultants, contractors and anyone else working independently who has wondered whether they are charging enough, or felt uneasy raising a rate they knew was overdue. Most of the material assumes you are running a business of one, in any country, though the detailed tax calculations are United States specific.

What this site is not

It is not tax advice, legal advice or financial advice, and nothing here replaces a conversation with a qualified professional who knows your situation. The calculators and guides exist to give you an honest starting point and to help you ask better questions when you do speak to one.

It is also not a lead magnet. There is no sign-up, no email capture, no course, and nothing to buy. The site is funded by advertising, which is why ads appear on some pages. Your calculator inputs are never sent anywhere; every calculation runs in your own browser.