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Freelance Profit Margin Calculator
Know what a project or a month actually leaves you with. Enter your income and costs, get the margin, and see which lever matters more.
Gross profit margin
35%
$3,500 profit on $10,000 income
Income
$10,000
Costs
$6,500
Profit
$3,500
Above 30%: healthy for a service business. The question now is whether you can keep it as you grow.
Gross margin is pre-tax and ignores your own time. It tells you about the work, not your personal pay. Estimate only, not financial advice.
What the margin tells you
1. Margin is not profit. Margin is the share of income left after the costs that belong to that income: software, subcontractors, platform fees, tools. Your own time and taxes are separate questions, handled after the margin.
2. Raising prices beats cutting costs. A 10% price increase on a 20% margin business raises profit 50%. Cutting 10% of costs raises it less. The numbers above show your own case, so you can see which lever is bigger for you.
3. Compare per project, not just per month.One client may pay twice as well as another at the same hourly rate, once their communication load and revision rounds are counted as cost. Margin per client is where the real decisions live.
Frequently asked questions
What is a good profit margin for a freelancer?
There is no single right number. 30% or above is healthy for a service business, 10–30% is common once subscriptions and platform fees are counted, and anything below 10% usually means the income is not worth the work behind it. What matters is that the number is real and you know it.
Should my own time count as a cost?
For personal profit decisions, yes. If you do the work yourself, your time is the biggest hidden cost. This calculator keeps it separate so the margin stays about the work, but a true per-project decision should compare the profit against the hours it took.
How is margin different from markup?
Margin is profit divided by selling price. Markup is profit divided by cost. A 50% markup on a $100 cost gives a $150 price, which is a 33% margin. Confusing the two is how freelancers accidentally underprice work.
Where do I find the real numbers to put in?
Your bank and payment-platform exports. Import them into Tally Assistant and the categorized income and expenses give you the same figures this calculator needs, per month or per project.
See your real margin, not the guess
Import your bank and platform CSVs and Tally Assistant categorizes income and expenses into a P&L report, so the numbers for this calculator come from actual transactions.