Fixed-Price Project Profitability Calculator

You quoted a fixed fee. Find out what it actually paid per hour once the unbilled revisions are counted — a fixed fee does not rise when the work does, it just gets divided by more hours. Enter your quoted fee, the revenue you collected, the hours you worked, your direct costs and the hours you spent on unbilled revisions, and the calculator returns your gross profit, gross margin, effective hourly rate, the estimated revenue you gave away on free changes, and a starting point for quoting a comparable project. No account, no email address, and every figure stays in your browser: the arithmetic runs in the page, so nothing you type is sent to Stria, saved, or shared.

What it calculates

  • Gross profit. Revenue collected minus subcontractor costs, project expenses and payment processing fees. It assigns no cost to your own time, so it is what the project produced in cash before you pay yourself
  • Gross margin. Gross profit as a share of what you collected. Not available when nothing has been collected, rather than reported as zero
  • Effective hourly rate. Gross profit divided by every hour worked, including the unpaid ones. An estimate of profit per hour after direct project costs — not a wage and not a tax calculation
  • Revenue lost to unpaid changes. Your quote divided by the hours it was written against gives the rate the project was really running at; multiplied by your unbilled revision hours, that is the estimated value of the time you gave away. An estimate of opportunity cost, not an invoice and not an amount anyone owes you
  • Suggested quote next time. The original quote plus that estimated value, as a starting point for a comparable project

Why freelance projects look profitable until the revisions arrive

A quote is not revenue: a discount, a partial payment or a written-off final invoice puts real distance between what you asked for and what landed. Unpaid revisions are subtler, because they never reduce the fee — they add hours, and hours are the denominator of your effective rate, so five free hours on a twenty-five hour project quietly costs a fifth of it. Direct costs and payment fees take the rest. The test for whether a client request is worth pricing is narrow on purpose: it changes the scope, the cost, the timeline, the deliverables or the number of revision rounds. The goal is not to invoice every clarifying question; it is to make a material change explicit before you start it.

Three steps that stop it happening again

  1. Capture the request. Forward the client email to Stria. It compares what they asked for against the scope you agreed and quotes the clause from your own wording
  2. Price the change. Work outside the agreed scope is costed against your rate card, with the basis shown, so the number is one you can put in front of a client
  3. Get approval before work starts. The finding becomes a change order your client signs, and the approved work becomes something you invoice rather than something you discover after delivery

Common questions

What is a good profit margin for a freelance project? There is no single threshold. What counts as healthy depends on the service, how much you subcontract, your overhead, the risk you carry and your business model. The number worth watching is your own, over time.

Does this include taxes and overhead? No. Taxes, general overhead, your own payroll and non-project time are all excluded. The only costs counted are the ones you enter as subcontractor costs, project expenses and payment fees.

Why is my effective hourly rate lower than my quoted rate? Hours you did not charge for increase the denominator, direct costs and fees reduce the numerator, and revenue you quoted but never collected never enters the calculation at all.

Can I use it for agency projects? Yes, reading the hourly rate as the contribution each project hour made towards payroll and overhead rather than as profit — it assigns no cost to internal time.

This calculator provides planning estimates, not accounting, tax, legal, or financial advice.

Check a client request against your scope, free · Start your 14-day trial · How to calculate freelance project profitability · Effective hourly rate for freelancers · Charging for extra revisions · See pricing