What should you charge a day?

Most sole traders price at whatever the last customer paid. This works it the other way round - from the money you actually want to keep - and then shows you what your holiday, your paperwork and your tax are each costing you a day.

Nothing is sent anywhere No email needed Every assumption is yours to change
After tax. The money that ends up in your account and stays there - not turnover, not profit.
£ a year
Van, fuel, insurance, tools, phone, accountant, pitch fees, software. Everything you pay whether or not you work that week.
£ a year
We start at 5.6 weeks, which is 28 days - the paid holiday the law gives an employee, including bank holidays. You do not get it. If you want it, you have to charge for it.
weeks a year
We start at 5 days. That is our number, not a statistic - we have no source for what a self-employed tradesperson really loses and we are not going to invent one. If you have ever had a bad back, put more in.
days a year
Quoting, invoicing, chasing money, driving to merchants, answering the phone, the paperwork. We start at 20%. This is the number most people put too low, and it is the one most worth being honest about.
% of your days
We start at 25%. We do not know your tax position and we are not going to guess it. Get the real number off last year's return: the tax and National Insurance you paid, divided by your profit.
% of profit
Only used to work out what your hour is worth. It does not change your day rate - which is the point, and probably not what you expected.
hours
Days you can actually charge for0
You need to charge
—
Fill the boxes in and we will work it backwards.
  • Take-home you want£0
  • Profit needed before tax£0
  • Tax and National Insurance£0
  • Running costs£0
  • Turnover you must invoice£0
  • Working days in a year0
  • Less holiday0
  • Less sick days0
  • Less unbillable time0
  • Days left to charge for0
  • An hour of that day is worth£0
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What each of these is costing you a day

Not an estimate. We work your year out again with each one taken away, and show you the difference. It is your own numbers, answered twice.

    The sum, written out

    There is nothing clever in it. The reason so few people have done it is that it runs backwards from the way a price normally gets picked.

    Backwards, in five steps

    • Start at the endThe money you want in your hand after tax. Not turnover. Turnover is what you invoice; take-home is what is left when everybody else has been paid, and it is the only figure that decides whether the year was worth it.
    • Gross it upTo keep that after tax, you must earn more than it before tax - and it is a division, not an addition. To keep £30,000 at a 25% tax share you need £40,000 of profit, not £37,500. Adding the rate back on is the single most common way this sum is got wrong.
    • Add the running costsThe van, the insurance, the tools, the accountant. They come out of turnover before profit, so they go back on here.
    • Count the days you can really charge forA year is 52 weeks of 5 days - 260 working days. Take off your holiday, take off your sick days, then take off the share of what is left that goes on quoting, invoicing, chasing and driving. Whatever survives is what you have to sell.
    • DivideTurnover you must invoice, divided by days you can charge for. That is your day rate. Anything less and the difference comes out of your holiday, your pension or your evenings.

    Where our starting numbers come from, since we are asking you to trust them for about ten seconds. 5.6 weeks is the statutory paid holiday of an employee - 28 days including bank holidays - and it is the only figure here taken from anywhere but us. The 5 sick days, the 20% unbillable and the 25% tax share are ours, they are marked "ours to start" on every box, and each one is deliberately on the cautious side. Where we do not know a number, we lean toward you charging more, because charging twenty pounds a day too much costs you one job and charging twenty pounds a day too little costs you a year - and you do not find out until the year is over. Change every one of them. They are boxes, not verdicts.

    This is guidance, not tax advice, and not a valuation of your work. It answers one question - what your own figures imply you must charge - and it cannot know what your market will pay, what your competitors charge, whether you are VAT registered, or what your accountant would say about your tax position. If the number it gives you is far above what you charge today, that is worth a conversation with somebody who knows your trade, not an overnight price rise.

    The bit most calculators leave out

    Working longer days does not raise your day rate. It cannot - the sum divides your year's turnover by the days you can charge for, and a day is a day whether you are on site for eight hours or twelve. All a longer day does is lower what your hour is worth. That is why box 7 changes the hourly figure and leaves the daily one exactly where it was, and it is the one result on this page people tell us they had backwards.

    The other one: two things in the panel above are far bigger than the rest, and only one of them is the tax. The other is your unbillable time - the quoting, the chasing, the paperwork - and on the figures this page opens with, the two are within a few pounds a day of each other. Which of them comes out on top depends on your own numbers, so read your panel rather than ours. What does not change is which one you can do anything about: the tax comes off your money, the unbillable time comes off your days, and days are the thing you have least of. That is the part software can actually give you back.

    While you are here: what is your website costing you?

    Tell us your website and we audit it the way Google and the new AI search engines see it: speed, mobile, findability, AI-readability. Every finding says what it is, how we fix it, and what that costs. Built by our engine, read by you in five minutes.

    Automated checks of your public homepage only. No login, nothing changed, no sales call unless you ask for one.

    Now make the day pay it.

    Fourteen days of the whole system, free. Quotes that go out the same day instead of the same weekend, jobs costed against what they really took, and the unbillable hours above finally showing up somewhere you can see them.

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