How to price your services in 2026 and cover your bills

To set a rate that pays your bills, add up the take-home pay you want, your business costs, health cover and retirement savings, divide by one minus your tax rate, then divide again by the hours you can realistically bill. That number is your floor. Market rates and the value you create decide how far above it you can charge.

Start with a floor, not a guess

A floor rate is the lowest price at which a job doesn't cost you money against your own targets. Most solo owners skip this and price by feel, which usually lands below what they need once tax and unbilled time are counted.

Use this formula:

Floor rate = (take-home pay + business costs + health cover + retirement savings) ÷ (1 minus tax rate) ÷ billable hours

Take billable hours first, because people overestimate them. A working year has roughly 2,000 hours, and a solo business owner spends a large share on sales, admin, learning and gaps between projects. Assuming 1,200 billable hours is a reasonable starting point. Track your real figure for a month before you trust it.

Here is a worked example. The inputs are assumptions, so replace them with yours.

Take-home pay you want: $70,000

Business costs (software, equipment, insurance, accounting): $6,000

Health cover: $6,000

Total: $82,000

Assume a combined tax rate of 30%. Gross needed: $82,000 ÷ 0.70 = about $117,100.

Billable hours: 1,200.

Floor rate: $117,100 ÷ 1,200 = about $98 an hour.

If your current rate is below that, each job moves you away from your own goal. This isn't a rule about what you deserve. It's arithmetic.

What tax really takes

The 30% above is a placeholder, and it matters, so check your own. Self-employed people pay both halves of social contributions, which employees don't see on their payslip.

In the US, the IRS lists the self-employment tax at 15.3%, made up of 12.4% for Social Security and 2.9% for Medicare. The Social Security part applies up to a yearly wage base, which the Journal of Accountancy reports rises to $184,500 for 2026, up from $176,100 in 2025. That is before federal income tax and any state tax. The IRS also says self-employed people generally must pay estimated tax if they expect to owe $1,000 or more when they file, which means you set money aside during the year instead of paying one large bill in spring.

In the UK, Class 4 National Insurance for 2026 to 2027 is 6% on profits between £12,570 and £50,270 and 2% above that, with Class 2 at £3.65 a week where it applies. Income tax comes on top.

Rules differ in other countries, and they change. Use these numbers as a check on the 30% placeholder, then ask an accountant to confirm what applies to you. A practical habit: move a fixed share of every payment into a separate tax account the day it arrives.

Check the floor against the market

A floor tells you what you need. The market tells you what clients will pay. These can disagree, and when they do you need to know which one is wrong.

Where to find real numbers:

Bonsai's rates explorer breaks rates down by role, skill and experience. As of its 2024 edition, it says design rates, graphic design in particular, hardly reach $60 an hour at any location or experience level, and that developers earn about 30% more than designers. Treat the page as a guide to relative differences, and check the figures that fit your niche.

Upwork's public guides and your own proposal history show what buyers accept in your category. Platform rates run lower than direct rates in many fields, so don't treat them as a ceiling.

Peers are useful too. Ask three people in your niche what they charge and what they turned down.

Market rates are a band, not a number. Someone with two years of experience at the top of the band gets undercut. Someone with eight years at the middle leaves money on the table. Place yourself honestly, using proof: results, repeat clients and how often you're booked.

If the market pays less than your floor, you have three options. Cut costs, raise your billable hours by getting better at sales, or move to a niche where the band is higher. Charging below your floor and hoping isn't one of them.

Hourly, project and value-based pricing

Each model fits a different situation, and most people end up using more than one.

Hourly pricing suits unclear scope, support work and short tasks. Its weakness is that you earn less when you work faster. If you improve at the job, your income per project falls.

Project pricing fits work with a defined scope. You estimate the hours, add a buffer, price the result and keep the benefit of working efficiently. It needs a written scope, or the project grows and your effective rate drops. A guide to estimating projects without underquoting helps here, and a clear list of what's excluded matters as much as what's included.

Value-based pricing sets the price from what the outcome is worth to the client, not from your hours. A landing page for a product launch that drives six figures in revenue isn't worth the same as a landing page for a hobby site, even if both take 30 hours. It needs three things: a believable outcome story with numbers, willingness to walk away from buyers who only compare hourly rates, and a niche narrow enough to anchor a value range.

A working sequence: use the floor as your minimum, the market band as your hourly default, and move to project or value-based pricing on jobs where you can show the outcome.

Retainers sit alongside these. A fixed monthly fee for an agreed amount of work gives you steady income and gives the client priority. Many senior service providers are moving away from hourly rates for this reason.

The market is changing, so check your assumptions

Competition and tools shift prices. MBO Partners' State of Independence reports 74.9 million Americans earning income independently, with almost 6 million making more than $100,000 a year. Upwork's 2025 Future Workforce Index, as summarized by Small Business Trends, found that 28% of US knowledge workers freelance or work independently, with a median income of $85,000 for exclusive freelancers, against $80,000 for full-time employees.

Two takeaways. Working for yourself can pay as well as employment, and it is crowded. Both support the same advice: price from your costs and your results, and stop letting one client's budget set your rate.

Practical rules for quoting

Quote in options. A client choosing between a core package and a fuller one is deciding which to buy, not whether to buy.

Collect a deposit. A deposit covers early work, and it filters out clients who were never going to pay. Half to start is common.

Raise rates on new clients first. Existing clients can move more slowly, with notice. If every new client says yes without a pause, you are probably too cheap.

Charge for rush work. Urgent jobs displace other work, so price them higher. A rush-fee guide covers how.

Review prices twice a year. Your costs, skills and demand all move. Pick two dates and look at your last six months of work.

Don't discount silently. If you want to offer a lower price, trade it for something: a shorter scope, a faster payment, a testimonial or a longer commitment.

How Delivvo helps you hold your price

Setting the right rate is half the job. The other half is quoting it clearly and getting it paid without a negotiation each time. Delivvo covers that part of the cycle.

The flow looks like this:

1. An inquiry form collects the brief and budget before you spend time on a quote, so you can qualify clients against your floor.
2. You build a quote from packages and add-ons. Three tiers become three clear options, and each add-on is its own line.
3. On the Pro plan, the client picks a package, signs the contract and pays the deposit on one page. The client record, project, contract, invoice and payment schedule are created from that choice.
4. A payment schedule splits the total into up to 12 payments with their own due dates. For retainers, recurring invoices bill on a schedule.
5. Invoices go out with sequential numbers in your own format, and the client pays through your own gateway.

Delivvo takes 0% of what clients pay you, which matters when you've worked out your floor to the dollar. A percentage fee on every payment is a cost your formula has to absorb. Every quote, contract and invoice also carries a verification code anyone can check.

There is a free invoice generator too, with no account needed, if you want to test the layout first. Tax rules vary, and Delivvo's documents are records you issue, so confirm tax details with your accountant. Whether to publish your rates at all is a separate call.

Next, look at quotes and proposals or how the CRM fits around it.

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