Independent work is priced badly more often than it is sold badly. The usual error is dividing a target salary by 2,080 hours and quoting the result, which ignores every hour that is not billable and every cost an employer used to absorb.
Which one you want
Freelance Rate is the place to start: it works backwards from the income you need, then adds back the non-billable time, unpaid holiday, sick days, business expenses and self-employment tax that an employed salary hides. Salary to Hourly converts an employed offer into the equivalent freelance rate, which is the honest comparison when weighing a contract against a job. Project Estimate prices fixed-scope work with a contingency buffer, and Invoice Calculator handles the final document, including tax and multi-line totals.
What the numbers mean
Realistic billable utilisation for a solo freelancer is 50–70%, not 100%. Sales calls, proposals, admin, invoicing and marketing are real hours that no client pays for directly. On a 60% utilisation assumption, a $100,000 income target across 46 working weeks is roughly a $120/hour rate before tax and expenses — not the $52/hour a naive 2,080-hour division suggests. Quote from the first number and the business works; quote from the second and it slowly does not.