Free hourly rate calculator
What should I charge per hour?
Start from what you want to earn and what your business costs to run, divide by the hours you can actually bill, and add a profit margin. That is your floor, before you look at what others charge.
Rates and rules checked November 13, 2026
Billable hours are fewer than you think
Driving between jobs, picking up materials, quoting, invoicing and chasing payments are all work, but nobody pays for them by the hour. If you work 45 hours a week and bill 30, your rate has to cover all 45. Count weeks honestly too: holidays, weather, slow months and sick days.
What to put in overhead
Everything the business pays for that isn't billed to a specific job: truck payments, fuel and insurance, liability insurance, WSIB or CNESST, tools and their replacement, phone, software, accounting, licences and association fees, advertising. As a self-employed person you also pay both the employee and employer share of CPP (or QPP in Québec), so leave room for it in your pay or your overhead.
This calculator does arithmetic on the numbers you enter. It is not tax or legal advice; check your situation with the CRA, your provincial tax office or your accountant.
Questions contractors ask
Is this the rate I should quote every job at?
It is your minimum for labour. Materials, subcontractors and equipment get their own markup on top, and a fixed-price quote should still be built from this rate times a realistic number of hours.
Should I include employees?
This calculator is for your own time. For an employee, start from their wage plus payroll costs (CPP/QPP, EI, workers' compensation, vacation pay) and divide by their billable hours the same way.
Stop doing this math by hand.
quoteai writes the whole quote from a few words: line items, your markup, the right taxes for the customer's province, deposits and progress billing. Then the contract, the invoice and the payment use the same numbers.
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