Free tool for Australian tradies

Charge-out rate calculator

Enter your wage, overheads and billable hours. See the minimum hourly rate you need to charge to cover your costs and hit your profit target. Takes 60 seconds.

Your numbers

All figures are annual. The calculator updates the result live as you type.

Typical trade overheads to count:
  • Vehicle: rego, insurance, fuel, servicing
  • Public liability and income protection insurance
  • Tools, equipment and PPE
  • Phone, software, admin tools
  • Rent, storage, yard
  • Accountant and bookkeeper
  • Advertising and website
30 hrs/wk
Most tradies bill 50 to 70% of hours worked. Travel, quoting, admin and jobs that run over all eat into billable time. Slide left if you are not sure.
20%
Profit margin is what is left after you have paid yourself and covered all costs. A 10 to 20% margin is typical for small trade businesses.
Minimum charge-out rate
$87/hr
This is the minimum hourly rate you need to cover all costs and hit your target margin. Charge less than this and you are working backwards. Charge more and you are building a real business.
$108,200
Total annual cost (wage + overheads)
1,560 hrs
Billable hours per year
$69/hr
Break-even rate before margin
Formula used:
Annual billable hours = billable hrs/wk x 52
Annual wage cost = hourly wage x annual billable hours
Total cost = annual wage cost + annual overheads
Break-even rate = total cost / annual billable hours
Charge-out rate = break-even rate / (1 minus margin %)

Why your rate is not your wage

The single biggest mistake tradies make when pricing is working backwards from what they want to take home. If you want $45 an hour and you charge $45 an hour, you are effectively paying your own overheads out of pocket.

Here is why the gap exists. First, you do not bill every hour you work. Travel to jobs, quoting, chasing invoices, buying materials, doing admin at the end of the day - none of that goes on an invoice. If you work 45 hours a week but bill 30, you are already giving away a third of your time for free.

Second, you carry costs an employee does not. A tradie on wages does not pay for the van, the insurance, the tools, the software, or the accountant. If you run your own business, those costs come out of your revenue before you see a cent. A well-equipped tradie with a van can easily spend $20,000 to $40,000 a year on overheads before drawing a wage.

The calculator above accounts for both of these factors. It treats overheads as a real cost, spreads them across only your billable hours (not your total hours), and then builds in your target margin on top of that. The result is a rate that actually keeps the business healthy.

Australian benchmark

Average trade charge-out rates across Australia sit in the range of $80 to $130 per hour depending on trade and city. Pest control and pool care tend to sit in the lower range. Refrigeration, electrical and HVAC techs tend to sit higher. These figures are indicative; your actual rate should come from your own cost structure, not an industry average.

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Now you know what your hour is worth, it is time to stop spending 8 to 16 of them every month ringing customers who are due for their annual service. Rebookd handles the reminder and the rebook automatically by SMS, so those hours go back to billable work or to your family. At $87 an hour, 10 hours a month is $870 of real capacity returned.

See how Rebookd works

Common questions

Your charge-out rate is the hourly price you bill customers. It must cover your wage, all business overheads, and a profit margin. It is not the same as your take-home pay. Most Australian tradies charge between $80 and $130 per hour depending on trade and location.
Add your annual wage cost to your annual overheads. Divide that total by your annual billable hours to get your break-even rate. Then divide by one minus your desired profit margin to get your final charge-out rate. The calculator above does this live as you type.
Because you only bill for some of your hours. Travel, quoting, admin and downtime are all real work hours you cannot charge for. Plus you carry costs like insurance, vehicle, tools and phone that an employee does not. Every hour you cannot bill for spreads that overhead across fewer billable hours, which pushes your rate up significantly.
Vehicle costs (rego, insurance, fuel, servicing), public liability and income protection insurance, tools and equipment, phone and software subscriptions, any rent or storage, accountant and bookkeeper fees, and advertising. If you run a van, vehicle costs alone often run $15,000 to $25,000 per year.