Hey DEV community 👋
Let's talk about the most uncomfortable topic in software engineering: Money and pricing your freelance work.
When I took on my first few side-gigs, I thought charging $50/hr was fantastic. But at the end of the year, after paying for GitHub Copilot, Vercel hosting, self-employment taxes, and realizing I spent 30% of my time just answering client emails (unbillable!), my actual take-home profit was shockingly low.
As developers, we love formulas. So why do we guess our pricing?
I found a ridiculously helpful free tool called TheChmodCalc. It’s a freelance rate calculator that treats your pricing like an algorithm.
You feed it your variables:
- Target net income
- Business expenses (AWS, domains, software)
- Tax brackets
- Real billable hours (excluding vacation and admin work)
It executes the logic and returns the exact hourly rate you must charge to hit your goal. No fluff, just raw numbers.
If you're doing freelance dev work, stop guessing your worth. Run your parameters through the calculator. Let me know in the comments if your calculated rate was higher or lower than what you currently charge!
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