Realistic hours
How many billable hours per week is realistic?
The hours you are at your desk and the hours a client pays for are two different numbers. For most freelancers the second one lands between 20 and 30 a week, not 40. Here is why, and how to plan a day around the real figure.
The short answer
Aim for 20 to 30, not 40
Forty hours at your desk do not turn into forty hours on an invoice. Quoting, email, admin, the call that becomes three calls: none of it bills, and all of it takes real time. What is left, the focused work a client actually pays for, is usually 20 to 30 hours. Treat that as your planning number, not the 40 on paper.
Not sure what counts as billable in the first place? Start with what billable hours are
20-30h
A realistic billable week for many solo freelancers on a standard 40 desk hours. Yours may sit higher or lower; the gap is the point.
The math
Where the other ten hours go
Start with a full week: five days of eight hours. That is 40 hours of being at work. Now take out the parts of the job that keep the business running but never reach an invoice.
A rough breakdown most freelancers recognise: an hour a day on email and messages, a few hours a week quoting and chasing new work, an hour or two on invoicing and admin, and the slow tax of switching between clients and contexts. Add it up and ten to twenty hours are gone before any client work happens.
What remains is your billable capacity. On a calm week it might be 30 hours. On a week heavy with sales or admin it can drop under 20. Neither is a failure. It is the real shape of solo work, and planning against the 40 you wrote down is how you end up overbooked.
Planning against it
Plan the day, and the week takes care of itself
You do not hit a realistic week by tracking it after the fact. You hit it by planning each day against the hours you actually have, and stopping before the day tips over. That is what the capacity bar is for: size each task, set the real hours for the day, and watch the bar fill. When it turns red while you are still planning, that is your cue to move something, not a verdict at 5pm.
Try a day
Build a day and see where your line is
The 20 to 30 is a week number. This is the day it is built from. Switch the tasks on and off and watch the bar fill, then tip into red once the plan runs past the six focused hours in a working day.
1h of focus left
A made-up day, sized in whole hours. The same bar sits in the planner, on the free plan.
That was a sample day. To get the number for your own week, run your real working days and non-billable time through the free calculator.
Try the free billable hours calculatorHonest answers
Questions worth asking first
- What counts as a billable hour?
- A billable hour is time a client pays for directly, the focused work on their project. The rest keeps the business running but never reaches an invoice: quoting, email, admin, and the constant switching between clients. Both are real work, but only the first goes on the bill. Planning your week around desk hours instead of billable ones is the mistake that leads to overbooked weeks.
- Is 20 to 30 billable hours low?
- It sounds low next to a 40-hour week, but for solo work it is normal. The unbilled hours are not wasted: they are the quoting, admin, and sales that keep the work coming. Counting on 40 billable hours is the mistake that leads to overbooked weeks and late nights.
- How do I find my own number?
- Track time per task for a couple of weeks and look at what was genuinely client work versus everything else. Most people land somewhere between 20 and 30. Once you know your figure, plan each day against it rather than against the hours on paper.
- Does TaskBerry track billable hours?
- Yes. You can log time per task and see hours per client over a month, and the capacity bar helps you plan a day that fits before you start. Time tracking and the capacity bar are on the free plan; client reports come with Pro at €9.95 a month.
- What if my week runs over 30 billable hours?
- Some weeks run higher, especially when you are deep in one project with little admin. The number is a planning guide, not a ceiling. The point is to plan against your real capacity for that week, whatever it is, instead of assuming every hour at your desk is billable.
Plan a week you can actually bill
Start free, size a real day, and watch the capacity bar. You will see the gap between your desk hours and your billable ones in about five minutes.