Guide · Effective hourly rate
You say 500 kr/t.
You earn 300 kr/t.
The difference is the hours you work for free, the ones no one ever taught you to measure. Here you get the number, the math, and the tool to find your own real hourly rate.
Written 16 April 2026 by Mathias Søndberg-Madsen, founder of Timerr.
What is an effective hourly rate?
Your hourly rate is the number you put in the quote. 500 kr/t. 750. 1.200. It's the price of one billed hour of work.
Your effective hourly rate is something else. It's what you actually earn per hour you work, including everything that never makes it onto the invoice: emails, quotes, scope creep, setup, travel, revisions, bookkeeping.
The two numbers are rarely the same. And the gap between them is the most important business metric you, as a freelancer, have never looked at.
Hourly rate
500 kr/t
What you sell. What you bill. The number your client sees.
Effective hourly rate
~300 kr/t
What you earn. What actually lands in your pocket per hour.
The math, with real numbers
Let's take Maria. She's a graphic designer, charges 500 kr/t, and has a steady flow of clients. A completely normal week looks like this:
What Maria bills
30 t × 500 kr = 15.000 kr
That's what clients see, and what the books say.
Maria's real hourly rate
15.000 kr ÷ 45 t = 333 kr/t
That's what she actually earns per hour she works.
The gap: 167 kr/t. Put another way: Maria works for free 15 hours a week, worth 360.000 kr a year, that never made it onto an invoice.
Where do the hours go?
Almost all invisible work falls into one of these four categories.
Admin and bookkeeping
Invoices, VAT, receipts, payment reminders, bank reconciliation. Everything no client pays for, but that a business can't run without.
Quotes and pre-sale
You write quotes, hold intro meetings, negotiate prices, and answer questions, often for hours, before the client has even said yes. The conversion rate is rarely 100 %.
Scope creep and free revisions
"Could you just quickly…" are the most expensive words a freelancer hears. Every little addition eats 20 minutes here and half an hour there. It never ends up on the invoice. But it happens every week.
Travel and setup
30 minutes in the car, 20 minutes setting up gear, 15 minutes packing it down again. The client pays for the hour you shoot, not the two extra hours it took to be on site.
Work out your own effective hourly rate
Three numbers. No login. No saved data. Just the truth.
What you charge on your invoice.
Actual client hours you charge for.
Admin, quotes, revisions, travel.
Your real hourly rate
kr/t
Gap to your hourly rate
kr/t
Free work/year
kr
Calculated over working weeks. Invisible work makes up % of your time.
This is a starting point, not a final answer. Most people underestimate their hidden hours by 30-50 %, because you don't remember the 15 minutes here and the half hour there. That's why it helps to measure it continuously.
So what do you do with the number?
Knowing your effective hourly rate is the first step. The next is doing something about it.
Price from your effective rate, not your hourly rate
If you want to earn 500 kr/t for real, your hourly rate usually needs to sit at 700-800 kr/t, precisely because ~30 % of your working time can't be billed. Work backwards from what you want to earn, not forwards from the market price.
Factor hidden hours into your quotes
A project of "10 design hours" is rarely 10 hours. It's 10 hours of design, plus 2 hours of emails, plus 3 hours of revisions. Add it on top of the quote, or set a fixed price that covers it.
Say no to projects below your threshold
Once you know your effective hourly rate, bad clients become visible. The client who sends six emails a day, asks for three rounds of revisions, and wants meetings every Friday? Their real hourly rate is maybe half of what you think.
Measure it continuously, not just in your head
Most people underestimate their invisible work by 30-50 %. An estimate every quarter gives you a rough picture; an app that tracks it per project gives you something to base decisions on.
Read on
Guide
What should I charge per hour?
Set your income goal first. Work backwards through tax, holidays, and non-billable time. Get the number you actually need to charge.
Read the guideGuide
Fixed price vs. hourly: when does each win?
When a fixed price pays off, and when scope creep eats your hourly rate. With a break-even calculator.
Read the guideHow Timerr does it automatically
Stop guessing. Start measuring.
Timerr is built around exactly this number. You log your time the way you always do, but you get both hourly rates out: the one you charge, and the one you actually earn. Per project. Per client. Per week.
1.
Log your hours, billable and non-billable alike.
2.
Timerr works out your effective and real hourly rate automatically.
3.
You see exactly where your hidden hours disappear to.
The Hobby plan is free forever. No credit card.