Free calculator
Calculate your realistic billable hours
There is no magic number. There is your number. Set your working days, your hours, and the time that is not billable, and this does the math.
The calculator
Find your billable ceiling
Move the sliders to match a normal week. The result updates as you go, so the number you land on is yours, not an average pulled from someone else's business.
Admin, quotes, finding the next client, breaks. Set the share of the day that never reaches an invoice.
A realistic billable ceiling
28billable hours a week
5.6 billable hours on a working day121.3 billable hours a month, on average
Your gross week is working days times hours per day. The bar shows how much of it actually bills.
That is about 121.3 billable hours a month, the ceiling worth planning around. Say yes to the next thing only if the week still fits under it.
Plan a real day against it, freeSend it to someone and they open this exact result, ready to set it to their own numbers.
The honest part
Why you cannot bill every hour you work
Billable hours are the hours you invoice directly to a client, and a full working week always holds more than that: admin, sales, quoting and the breaks that never make it onto an invoice. Pretend the two are the same, and a day quietly runs to sixteen hours.
- Admin and invoicing
- Quotes, contracts, bookkeeping, and the email that keeps a project moving. Real work, none of it billable.
- Finding the next client
- Calls, proposals, and marketing. The hours that fill next month's calendar do not fill this month's invoice.
- Breaks and switching
- Lunch, a walk, and the reset between two clients. The breaks are what keep the billable hours good.
Want the reasoning behind the number? How many billable hours a week is realistic
Not sure which of your hours are billable to begin with? See what billable hours are
From ceiling to daily plan
A weekly ceiling only helps if your day respects it
Knowing your billable ceiling is the easy half. The hard half is a Tuesday that already holds more work than the hours you have, before you agree to one more thing.
TaskBerry gives each task a time size and checks the plan against the hours you actually have that day. When it runs over, the board turns red before you start, not at five when there is nothing left to move.
Questions
Common questions about billable hours
- What are billable hours?
- Billable hours are the hours you invoice directly to a client. Not every hour you work is billable: admin, finding the next project, and breaks are part of the job but never reach an invoice. The calculator above shows how many hours of your week are left to bill.
- What's the difference between billable and non-billable hours?
- Billable hours are the ones you put on a client invoice: the actual work you were hired to do. Non-billable hours are just as real, but nobody pays for them directly: admin, quoting, sales calls, invoicing and the breaks that keep you working. Both fill your week, so if you plan only for the billable part your day runs long.
- Is there a standard number of billable hours per week?
- No. A common working week runs around forty hours, but the billable share depends on how much of it goes to admin, finding work, and breaks. The honest number is the one you get after subtracting your own non-billable time, which is what the calculator above does.
- Why can't I bill all of my working hours?
- Because every week has work you cannot invoice: sending quotes, chasing the next project, bookkeeping, email, and the breaks that keep your billable hours sharp. Treat those hours as part of the job, not as time you lost.
- How do I plan so I don't blow past this ceiling?
- Give each task a time size, set the day's capacity to the hours you actually have, and watch the board. When the plan runs over, it turns red before you start. That is the mechanic TaskBerry is built on.
- Does this replace time tracking?
- No. This is a planning number, an estimate of what you can realistically bill. Time tracking tells you what you actually billed. TaskBerry does both: it plans the day and logs the hours per client so the two can be compared.
Who made this
One person in the Netherlands, not a team of marketers.
Gydo built TaskBerry for himself, because no tool he tried did the capacity math his own freelance days needed. The calculator above is that same honest math, pulled out so you can run your numbers before you sign up.
Plan a day that respects your ceiling
Start free, put a real day in, and watch the bar. Within five minutes you will know whether the day you planned is a day you can finish.