Free tool

Project pricing calculator

Price the outcome, not the hours. Enter what the work is worth to the client and what it honestly takes you — get back three anchored options, floored at your cost of time, ready for a proposal.

The deal

Revenue the work plausibly unlocks or protects over a year — ask on the discovery call; estimate honestly if you must.
What the Essential version really takes, including revisions.
From the rate calculator — the rate below which your year doesn't add up.

Three options to present

Essential

$5,980

The core outcome, tightly scoped.

CompleteRecommend this

$9,980

The recommended scope — outcome plus the pieces that protect it.

Premium

$15,980

Everything in Complete, extended — more ground covered, more of it handled for them.

The math, shown:

Your floor for this scope is $3,600 (hours × rate). The Complete tier targets ~10% of the yearly value the work creates; every tier is floored at cost-of-time, and the figures are nudged off round numbers — a price like $9,980 reads as calculated, not guessed.

Where the numbers come from

The Complete tier targets ~10% of the yearly value you entered — the classic value-pricing anchor. Essential trims to the core outcome; Premium extends the scope and the handled-for-you surface. Every tier is floored at your cost of time, because value pricing should raise your price, never lower it. Don’t know your floor? Calculate it first. For the full method, read value-based pricing for creative freelancers.

Common questions

How does value-based project pricing work?
Instead of hours × rate, the price anchors to what the outcome is worth to the client — a common working heuristic targets roughly 10% of the first-year value the work creates. Your cost-of-time (honest hours × your floor rate) becomes the never-go-below line rather than the price itself.
Why present three pricing options instead of one price?
One number invites yes/no; three options invite 'which.' Anchoring with a premium tier makes the middle tier read as reasonable, and clients keep control of the depth rather than debating the worth. It's the single highest-leverage change most freelancers can make to their proposals.
What if 10% of the project's value is less than my time costs?
That's the calculator's warning state, and it's information: either the value is bigger than you've estimated (ask the client better questions), the scope is too heavy for the outcome, or the project can only ever pay floor rates. Price at your floor or reshape the work — never below the floor.
Why do the prices end in odd numbers?
Non-round figures read as calculated rather than guessed — $4,480 suggests arithmetic happened; $4,500 suggests a shrug. The calculator nudges every tier off too-round endings for exactly that reason.