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Consulting fee calculator: what should you actually charge?

Most consultant rate calculators divide your salary by 260 and stop there. This one accounts for the days you will never bill, gives you a day rate and an hourly rate, then checks the answer against what the UK market is really paying.

Your numbers

The maths is the same in any currency. The market benchmark is UK data in pounds.
What you want to earn before tax, not your billing total.
£
Insurance, accounting, software, equipment, marketing, training.
£
260 is a full year of weekdays.
Employees get these paid. You do not.
Business development, proposals, admin, finance. 30% is realistic for an independent; below 20% is optimistic.
30%
Buffer for lean months and reinvestment. Zero means you break even exactly.
10%

Your rate

£0 per day
Hourly equivalent
£0
Billable days a year
0
Effective utilisation
0%
Revenue you must bill
£0
Against the UK contract market

  • Business Analyst £500
  • IT Consultant £525
  • Project Manager £540
  • Management Consultant £550
  • Artificial Intelligence £559
  • Machine Learning £575
  • Cyber Security Consultant £599
  • Data Scientist £600

Median advertised day rates, six months to 21 August 2026. Source: IT Jobs Watch.

How this works

The calculation is deliberately simple, and the assumptions are yours to change:

  1. Available days = working days minus holiday, sickness and training.
  2. Billable days = available days minus the non-billable share.
  3. Revenue required = (income target + business costs) with your profit margin applied on top.
  4. Day rate = revenue required ÷ billable days. The hourly figure divides that by 7.5.

Two things this does not do. It does not calculate tax, because your structure, jurisdiction and dividend split change the answer too much for a generic tool to be useful. And it does not model ramp-up: your first year will have fewer billable days than your third.

The benchmark comparison uses the same figures as our rate guides for management consulting, AI, cyber security and IT. Those are contract-market medians, which is what an individual is paid. If you are pricing a consultancy engagement rather than your own time, the relevant numbers are in the consulting fees by industry benchmark.

Common questions

How much should I charge as a consultant?

Enough that your billable days cover your income target, your business costs and a margin. With the defaults above (£80,000 income, £12,000 costs, 35 days off, 30% non-billable, 10% margin) that is 158 billable days and a rate of £645 a day, or £86 an hour. Change any input and the answer moves with it. Then sanity-check it against the market: our guides to consultant hourly rates and UK consultant day rates show what buyers are actually paying by role.

How do I turn a salary into a consulting rate?

Do not divide by 260. An employee on £80,000 is paid for holidays, sick days, training and the quiet weeks. A consultant is not. Once you remove the days you will never bill, the same income needs roughly £640 to £650 a day, not the £308 that a naive salary-divided-by-260 calculation gives you.

Does this work for US or European consultants?

Yes. Switch the currency and enter your own figures; the formula does not change. Only the market benchmark is UK-specific. For US hourly billing rates by industry, use the consulting fees by industry benchmark. For freelance day rates in France, Germany, Spain and the Netherlands, see consulting fees by country.

Cite this tool: ConsultingDemand, “Consulting Fee Calculator”, data as of August 2026. https://consultingdemand.com/consulting-fee-calculator/