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Service pricing calculator

Find out what one hour of your operation costs and what to charge so the job closes with the margin you asked for — not with whatever is left over.

No sign-up. The calculation runs in your browser.

R$

Rent, software, accountant, internet — everything you pay even when you sell nothing.

R$

Salaries, owner pay and payroll charges for whoever does the work.

h

Only the hours the team can actually charge to a client. Internal meetings, holidays and prospecting do not count.

h

How long the work should take, adding up everyone involved.

%

How much of the final price you want left over as profit.

%

Effective rate applied to revenue. Under Brazil's Simples Nacional, services start at 6%.

No black box

How this calculation works

Four sums, in this order. You can redo every one of them on paper.

1. The cost of your hour

Add fixed costs to team cost and divide by the hours the team can genuinely bill in a month. That is what one hour of your operation costs before any profit.

2. The cost of this service

Multiply the hourly cost by the estimated hours. That is the floor: below it you are paying to work.

3. Margin on the price

Divide the cost by (1 − margin). Dividing rather than multiplying is what makes the margin apply to the price — which is where it actually has to show up.

4. Tax inside the price

Divide again, this time by (1 − rate). That way the tax comes out of the price instead of out of your profit.

The detail that eats your margin

Margin on cost is not margin

Multiplying cost by 1.20 looks like a 20% margin, but it isn't. The 20% applies to the cost, not the price — and the margin that reaches your bottom line is always smaller than the one you asked for. The higher the target, the bigger the hole: asking for 30% this way delivers close to 23%.

  • Multiplying applies the margin to the cost — the wrong base.
  • Dividing by (1 − margin) applies it to the price, which is the base that counts.
  • The error is small on one quote and enormous across a year of them.
  • The calculator above shows both numbers side by side so you can compare.

Once the quote is approved

The price is set. What about the hours?

This calculator works with the hours you estimate. What decides whether the job made money are the hours it actually consumed — and those only surface if someone records them. That is exactly what WiseData Time does: it records the hours and gives you back, per client and per project, the hourly rate you really achieved.

Do this automaticallyTry it for 30 days. No credit card.
  • Compares agreed revenue against the hours actually spent
  • Shows the effective hourly rate for each client
  • Warns at 80% and 100% of the budgeted hours
  • Points out which jobs took more time than agreed

Questions

Questions about pricing services

How do I calculate the price of a service?

Work out what one hour of your operation costs (fixed costs plus team cost, divided by the month's billable hours), multiply by the hours the service should take, and only then add margin and tax — both by dividing, not multiplying. That is the sequence this page's calculator runs.

What are billable hours?

They are the hours you can genuinely charge to a client. Internal meetings, training, prospecting, holidays and rework are not billable, but they still cost money. That is why the divisor is billable hours and not contracted hours: using the full month understates what your hour costs.

Why does the margin divide instead of multiply?

Because margin is a slice of the price, not an addition to the cost. Multiplying cost by 1.20 applies the 20% to the wrong base and delivers a real margin of about 16.7%. Dividing the cost by 0.80 delivers 20% of the price, which is the number that shows up in your result.

Should I charge by the hour or by the project?

The client can buy it either way — the maths behind it is the same. Even on a fixed fee you need to know how many hours the work consumes, because that is what tells you whether the agreed amount covers the cost. Charging per project without measuring hours is the shortest route to finding out too late that the price was wrong.

What profit margin should I use?

There is no universal number, and be suspicious of anyone offering one. The margin has to cover the risk of the work, the rework you typically have and what you want to reinvest. The honest route is to measure the margin your past projects actually delivered and start from there — not a percentage copied from another company.

Does the calculator store my data?

No. The whole calculation runs in your browser and the values you type are never sent to us or stored anywhere. If you want to keep the result, you can create a free account — at that point the data is saved, under our Privacy Policy.

Knowing the right price is half the job

The other half is finding out whether it survived the hours the work actually took.

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