Online Tool Store
Shop Hourly Rate Calculator
Enter your shop's fixed costs, staff wages, and billable hours to calculate the hourly rate you need to charge to break even and hit a target margin.
🔒 This tool runs entirely in your browser. Your files are never uploaded to a server.
Break-even rate
—
Covers costs exactly, zero profit
Rate to hit your margin
—
How Shop Hourly Rate Calculator works
- Enter your monthly fixed costs (rent, utilities, insurance, software) and total staff wages — a realistic sample shop is pre-filled.
- Enter how many hours per month you actually bill customers for, and the profit margin you want on top.
- The break-even rate is your total overhead divided by billable hours — the minimum you can charge without losing money.
- The target rate divides that break-even figure by
(1 − margin), so the stated margin percentage of your final rate is genuine profit, not a rough add-on.
Every dollar of overhead has to be recovered from billable hours alone, since unbillable time (admin, cleaning, downtime) earns nothing — that's why billable hours, not total staffed hours, belongs in the denominator.
FAQ
What counts as a "billable hour"?
Only hours you actually charge customers for — not every hour staff clock in. A typical shop open 40 hours a week rarely bills all 40; time spent on cleaning, admin, or waiting between jobs isn't billable, so your real billable-hours figure is usually lower than total staffed hours.
How is the break-even rate calculated?
It is total monthly overhead (fixed costs plus staff wages) divided by billable hours per month: rate = (fixed costs + wages) ÷ billable hours. That rate covers your costs exactly, with nothing left over as profit.
How does the target margin change the rate?
The tool divides the break-even rate by (1 − margin), rather than simply adding a percentage on top. That way, the stated margin percentage is actually what's left as profit out of the final rate you charge — the standard way to build a target margin into a price.
How we compare
| Feature | Online Tool Store | Doing it manually | A generic online tool |
|---|---|---|---|
| No file upload — runs in your browser | ✓ | N/A | ✗ |
| No sign-up required | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ |
| Free, no watermark | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ |
A generic markup calculator treats every business the same. This one is built around a shop's actual cost structure — fixed overhead plus wages, spread across the hours you can actually bill — so the rate it gives you reflects your real numbers, not a rule of thumb.