Consulting rate calculator 2026: what should you charge?
Four honest inputs — your experience, your field, what you need to earn, and the hours you can really bill — turned into a floor rate, a market range, and a suggested starting rate. Free, instant, and no income guarantees: just arithmetic you can defend out loud.
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Start with your floor: (what you need to earn + business costs and a 25–30% tax set-aside) ÷ honest billable hours — about 15 a week across 46 working weeks is typical for a first year. Check that floor against the market band for your field and experience, then quote the higher of the two. Depending on field and proof, first-time consultants commonly land somewhere in the $75–$200 an hour range — market context, not a promise.
Coming from a salary? Never divide it by 2,080 — that treats every hour as billable and forgets nobody is withholding your taxes or funding your benefits anymore. The published wage-to-rate cross-walk converts a paycheck with G ≈ 1.43 × salary + $5,000 over honest billable hours: at 15 billable hours a week across 46 working weeks, a $100,000 salary breaks even near $215 an hour in year one. Startup-cost mode (the toggle above the inputs) runs your exact number.
Your floor rate and the market band for your field and experience.
Methodology: profession anchors are BLS OEWS May 2025 national median wages; every rate is our computation from the published cross-walk formula — break-even math, not market quotes and not income promises.
See the full cross-walk — all twelve professions, the steady-state column, and the four conventions behind the formula.
Your rate only holds if the niche sells.
The $3 niche check pressure-tests the assumption behind every number on this page: describe your experience and skills, get an instant verdict on your most sellable consulting niche — with 3 positioned offer ideas and what each could realistically charge.
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Sources & data
- Wage anchors.BLS OEWS May 2025 national median wages, taken from each occupation's Occupational Outlook Handbook profile — the twelve occupations mapped in the wage-to-rate cross-walk.
- Benefits replacement. Employer-provided benefits average roughly 30% of compensation per the BLS Employer Costs for Employee Compensation program — the +30% of wages inside the cross-walk's 1.43 multiplier.
- Taxes. Nobody withholds tax from a consulting invoice — the IRS self-employment tax (15.3% for Social Security and Medicare) lands before income tax even starts, which is why the model carries a 25–30% set-aside.
- Utilization & formula. The published conventions — 15 honest billable hours a week across 46 working weeks in year one (690 hours), 25 in steady state, and G = W × (1 + 0.30 ÷ 0.70) + $5,000 — are documented with the full twelve-profession table on the cross-walk page.
- Market bands. The field/experience ranges are broad directional patterns for independent US B2B consultants — context for sanity-checking your floor, not benchmarks to anchor on, and not income promises.
Questions or corrections: [email protected].
How the calculator works
Every sustainable consulting rate starts with one honest piece of arithmetic — the floor:
Three of the four inputs are where first-timers usually lie to themselves:
- Billable hours are not working hours.Selling, invoicing, marketing, and the work of finding work eat roughly half a solo consultant's week. Plan around 40 billable hours and you've planned a business with no sales pipeline. Most independents land at 10–25 honest billable hours a week.
- A year is not 2,080 hours. The calculator multiplies your weekly billable hours by 46 working weeks, not 52 — vacations, holidays, sick days, and the dead week between Christmas and New Year are real whether you budget for them or not.
- Costs include taxes now. Nobody withholds tax from a consulting invoice. Add your business costs (software, insurance, marketing, hardware) and a tax set-aside — many first-timers use 25–30% of the income target — or your floor is fiction.
The floor is the number you may never go below: a yes under the floor loses money on every delivered hour. The market band is the sanity check above it. Your quoted rate lives between the two.
Startup-cost mode: what your paycheck must convert to
Flip the calculator into startup-cost mode(the toggle above the inputs) and it answers the question the floor can't: what does your current salary have to become as an independent rate before going solo breaks even? Pick your profession — the twelve BLS occupations from our wage-to-rate cross-walk — and the salary pre-fills with the May 2025 BLS median; edit it to your real number. The mode applies the published formula, G ≈ 1.43 × W + $5,000, over your honest billable hours, and adds the two numbers a leap actually runs on: months of runway (your savings ÷ your monthly burn) and the paycheck-replacement multiple — which lands at 4.4–4.5× your employed hourly at 15 billable hours a week, across all twelve professions.
The wage anchors are BLS OEWS May 2025 national medians; the rates are our computation — break-even math, not market quotes and not income promises. The utilization convention — 15 honest billable hours a week across 46 working weeks in year one (690 hours), 25 (1,150) in steady state — and the four conventions behind the formula are documented with the full table on the cross-walk page, along with the worked registered-nurse example.
The salary ladder: six paychecks, converted
Same formula, same conventions, same rounding as the twelve-profession cross-walk — run for six round-number salaries so you can read your own paycheck's neighborhood without touching the tool:
| Your salary | Required gross revenue (G) | Year-one break-even rate | Wage-to-rate premium |
|---|---|---|---|
| $75,000 | $112,143 | ~$165/hr | ≈4.5× of employed hourly |
| $100,000 | $147,857 | ~$215/hr | ≈4.5× of employed hourly |
| $125,000 | $183,571 | ~$265/hr | ≈4.4× of employed hourly |
| $150,000 | $219,286 | ~$320/hr | ≈4.4× of employed hourly |
| $175,000 | $255,000 | ~$370/hr | ≈4.4× of employed hourly |
| $200,000 | $290,714 | ~$420/hr | ≈4.4× of employed hourly |
Embed this calculator
Writing for people weighing the leap from a salary to solo consulting? You can embed the startup-cost mode of this calculator on your own site, free — the same live tool with the same math, plus a small “by Consulting.me” credit link under it. Copy the snippet and paste it wherever your site accepts HTML:
No sign-up, no rate limits, no branding beyond the one credit line. The tool runs entirely on your readers' browsers — nothing they type ever leaves their machine except the numbers they choose to bring back here for the niche check.
Consulting rates by niche and experience
These are the broad patterns the calculator checks your floor against — typical hourly ranges quoted by independent US B2B consultants, by field and by years doing the work:
| Field | 0–2 yrs | 3–7 yrs | 8–14 yrs | 15+ yrs |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Marketing & growth | $60–$120 | $100–$175 | $150–$250 | $200–$350 |
| Sales & revenue | $75–$125 | $125–$200 | $175–$300 | $250–$400 |
| Software, data & IT | $75–$150 | $125–$225 | $175–$300 | $250–$400 |
| HR, people & culture | $60–$110 | $90–$160 | $135–$225 | $185–$300 |
| Finance & accounting | $75–$135 | $125–$200 | $175–$275 | $225–$375 |
| Operations & process | $65–$120 | $110–$175 | $150–$250 | $200–$325 |
| Strategy & management | $85–$150 | $150–$250 | $200–$350 | $275–$450 |
| Design & creative | $50–$100 | $85–$150 | $125–$200 | $175–$275 |
| Training & enablement | $50–$95 | $80–$140 | $115–$190 | $150–$250 |
Treat the table as context, not gospel. Ranges shift with region, client size, and how narrowly you specialize — a generalist “marketing consultant” and a “lifecycle email consultant for subscription e-commerce” can be the same years of experience in very different bands. The only number in this page's math that is truly yours is the floor, because it comes from your arithmetic.
Working in IT? The IT consulting rates page benchmarks the service-type bands — support, systems admin, security, cloud, fractional IT leadership — in more detail than the single table row here, with the same benchmark-not-promise framing. For the cross-market picture, consulting rates in 2026 consolidates this year's benchmark bands by experience level and what's actually moving inside them.
When your floor and the market disagree
If the calculator flags a conflict — your floor sitting above the top of the band — it means the business you sketched doesn't yet close. That's common in year one, and there are four honest moves:
- Extend the ramp. Lower the near-term income target while you build proof. Keeping a part-time salary or a contracting gig through the first year is normal, not failure.
- Change the inputs.Bill more of the week, or trim the costs feeding the floor — but keep the hours honest, or you're just hiding the problem from yourself.
- Narrow the niche. Specialists out-charge generalists. The same skill pointed at a narrower, more expensive problem moves you into a higher band faster than another year of general experience does.
- Sell outcomes, not hours.A fixed-fee package priced against what the problem costs the buyer can clear a floor that hourly billing can't — once you can say what the outcome is worth with a straight face. See hourly vs value-based pricing for the full comparison.
How to quote the number
The hourly rate is internal math; buyers should rarely see it. For a scoped project, estimate your hours honestly, multiply by your rate, add 20–30% for the unknowns, and present one fixed number tied to a deliverable and a date — that's the fixed-fee example in the calculator. Fixed fees read as confidence to the buyer and protect you as you get fast. It's also why productized offers— named buyer, fixed scope, fixed price — outsell open-ended “consulting” for first-timers.
Three rules keep the number healthy once you start quoting it:
- Never name a number before you've agreed on the problem. Price follows diagnosis — a fee quoted before the scope is a guess, and buyers can tell.
- Raise 10–20% after every 2–3 yeses with no pushback.If nobody ever hesitates, you're under market. A no at a price is data; universal acceptance is a bigger one.
- Discount scope, never rate. Shrink the deliverable to meet a budget. Cutting the rate for the same work teaches every future buyer to negotiate it.
What this calculator can't tell you
No calculator can promise what anyone will pay you, and this one doesn't try. The bands are broad directional patterns, not benchmarks; your real rate is set each time by one specific buyer deciding your fix is worth more than its price. What the arithmetic does give you is the two things most first-timers never compute: the floor you can't afford to work under, and a starting number you can defend out loud.
If the open question is which of your skills buyers pay for most, that's exactly what the free niche read answers — 2 quick questions about your background and skills, an instant verdict on your most sellable niche, and one offer idea with realistic pricing. The $3 First-3-Clients Plan and the $29 Complete Launch Kit turn that verdict into three priced offers and a 30-day plan, if you want them.
Frequently asked questions
How much should I charge for consulting?
Compute your floor first: (what you need to earn + business costs and a 25–30% tax set-aside) ÷ honest billable hours — about 15 a week times 46 working weeks is typical for a first year. Then check the market band for your field and experience, and quote the higher of the two. Depending on field and proof, first-time consultants commonly land somewhere in the $75–$200 an hour range — but that is market context, not a promise, and your floor is the only number that is truly yours.
How do I turn my salary into a consulting rate?
Do not divide your salary by 2,000 hours — that assumes every hour is billable and that someone still withholds your taxes and funds your benefits. Use the salary as the income target, add your business costs plus a tax set-aside, and divide by honest billable hours (roughly half your working time, across 46 weeks). A $120,000 salary usually works out to a floor around $150 an hour, not $60.
How many billable hours a week is realistic for a solo consultant?
Most solo consultants land at 10–25 billable hours a week. The rest of the week goes to selling, proposals, invoicing, and the marketing that keeps the pipeline full. Planning around 30 or more billable hours means planning no time to find next month's work — the classic feast-and-famine setup.
Should I charge hourly or a fixed project fee?
Keep the hourly rate as internal math and quote fixed fees externally: estimate the hours honestly, multiply by your rate, add 20–30% for the unknowns, and present one number tied to a deliverable and a date. Reserve hourly billing for genuinely open-ended advisory work, where nobody can scope the problem yet.
When should I raise my consulting rate?
Raise 10–20% after every two or three consecutive yeses with no pushback — universal acceptance means you are under market. Raise again when you are booked more than three weeks out, and revisit the number at least once a year. Apply new rates to new clients first, then to existing clients at renewal, with notice.
How do I calculate my consulting rate from my salary?
Use the wage-to-rate cross-walk, not the 2,080-hour division: multiply your salary by 1.43 and add $5,000 — that grosses the paycheck up for the benefits employment used to fund, a 30% tax set-aside, and lean solo overhead — then divide by your honest billable hours for the year. A $100,000 salary becomes about $147,900 of required gross revenue; at 15 billable hours a week across 46 working weeks (690 hours a year) that is roughly $215 an hour to break even, about 4.5× the employed hourly wage. At a steadier 25 hours a week the same salary settles near $130 an hour. Flip the calculator into startup-cost mode to run your exact salary, or read the six-rung salary ladder on this page.