Ingrid draws structural details for small architecture practices in Tallinn, on her own, and she spent her first year charging 25 an hour because it was comfortably more than the hourly equivalent of her old salary. It was a little under half of what she needed. The mistake was not the number, it was the divisor, and it is the same divisor almost everybody uses in a first year.
Work it the other way, from what has to be covered. She wants 42,000 for the year. The costs an employer used to pay come first: drawing software at 1,900, professional insurance at 640, a laptop and a screen amortised at 900, an accountant at 780, and a share of phone and internet at 480. That is 4,700, so 46,700 has to arrive.
Then the divisor, which is where the year is won or lost. Fifty two weeks less five of holiday and two lost to illness and administration leaves 45 working weeks. Inside a 40 hour week she bills 22 hours. So the year holds 990 billable hours, not 2,080, and 46,700 divided by 990 is a little over 47. Divide by billable hours, not by the hours you are at the desk, and add the costs an employer used to pay before dividing. Her 25 was arrived at by dividing the same target by every hour in a working year, which is the arithmetic of someone being paid to be present.
The eighteen hours nobody invoices
A freelance week bills about half the hours it contains, and the other half is not slack. Ingrid's 22 hours of drawing sit beside 6 hours of quoting, calls and chasing the next job, 4 hours of invoicing, chasing payment and bookkeeping, 5 hours of revisions outside the rounds she agreed, and 3 hours of keeping up with the software and the codes she is signing off against. That is 40 hours, all of it work, and one row of it can be sent to a client.
An employed drafter does most of those same hours. Somebody else pays for them, which is the actual difference between the two arrangements and the reason the hourly comparison misleads in only one direction. The 5 hours of unpaid revisions are the row worth staring at, because unlike the others it is optional and it is created by a sentence that was never written down.
Charge for the job, and keep the hours as your own problem
The hourly rate is the calculation, not the thing to sell. Quote the job, and let the hours stay your problem: a client buying an afternoon is watching a clock, and a client buying a set of foundation details for a two storey extension is buying a thing, and Ingrid getting faster makes her more money instead of less. That is the whole argument, and it also removes the conversation where getting better at something reduces the invoice.
The clause that makes a fixed price survivable is the one people leave out. A fixed price with no number of revisions in it is an hourly job with no meter: two rounds included, further rounds quoted separately, and what counts as a round said in a line. Ingrid's line is that a round is one consolidated set of comments from the practice, which turns three architects sending notes on three days from three rounds of work into one round, without anybody having an argument about it in month four.
The stall is an hourly rate and a client you have started resenting
Here is where people stop, and the sign of it is a feeling rather than a number, which is why it goes unnamed for a year. The rate was set low to win the first jobs, which worked. The work arrives, the hours run over, the extra hours are absorbed because raising it feels like a confrontation, and the client, who has done nothing wrong and is paying what was asked, becomes the person to blame. Nothing about the client changed. The number was wrong on the day it was said and the arithmetic was never redone.
The way out is not a conversation about feelings, it is the calculation above, done once, on paper, with the real divisor. It produces a number that can be defended in a sentence, and defending a number is a different act from asking for more money. What happens to the money after it arrives, including anything with the word tax in it, is not on this page and is not anywhere on this site.
The pipeline
Four stations, and it stalls at the third
The loop pays only while it turns. A month with nothing in it was caused eight weeks earlier, in a week when the work was going well.
The empty month
- 01Finding workPays in six to ten weeks, and has no deadline today
- 02QuotingThe number, the scope, the rounds and the deposit
- 03Doing the workWhere the loop stops, because this part has a date on it
- 04Getting paidA separate event from finishing, and not automatic
- 01Finding workPays in six to ten weeks, and has no deadline today
- 02QuotingThe number, the scope, the rounds and the deposit
- 03Doing the workWhere the loop stops, because this part has a date on it
- 04Getting paidA separate event from finishing, and not automatic
Nothing here says the third station is the problem. It is the only one with somebody else's deadline attached, which is why it wins every week it is allowed to.
The loop stops at the station where the work is going well
The month with nothing in it is not caused by a bad month. It is caused eight weeks earlier by a good one: the work was going well, the days were full, and nothing was quoted or chased, because finding work is the only station on the loop with no deadline attached to it. Ingrid's answer is two hours on Tuesday mornings that do not move, spent on the station she is not currently standing at.
The paying half has the same shape. Take the deposit before the start date, not before the invoice: a third at the start, a third at the halfway drawing, the rest on delivery, and the client who will not pay a deposit has told you something in week zero that you would otherwise learn in month three. This is the part the part that is not automatic takes apart properly, and it is the cluster people read last and should read second.
What to open in 2026
Stripe or PayPal for invoices and card payment, which replaced the bank details pasted into an email and the fortnight of silence afterwards. Neither charges a monthly fee and both take a cut of each payment, and that cut belongs in the rate rather than in a complaint: it is a cost an employer used to absorb, exactly like the insurance line. The practical gain is not the card, it is that an invoice with a link has a status, so chasing becomes a fact rather than an accusation.
A shared folder with dated deliverables, in Google Drive or Dropbox, both free at the size a single person needs, replaced the file emailed as version final two. It matters here for one reason that has nothing to do with tidiness: the folder is what makes the revision count visible, and a clause about rounds that neither side can count is a clause that will be argued about.
A model drafts the quote and the scope note now, which is the change since 2023, and it replaced the two hours a proper written quote used to cost, which is why most quotes were a number in an email. Every major assistant covers it on a free tier. What it cannot supply is the number or the revision count, and it will cheerfully produce a confident scope for a job nobody has priced.
Six clusters, and the two that decide the year
What to charge, which is the hardest part is the one above and it is first, because every other cluster is cheaper to fix. Delivering without losing money on it is the rounds clause and the scope note, which is the same arithmetic defended after the fact. A pipeline, so there is no month with nothing is the Tuesday morning, and it is the cluster whose absence is invisible for exactly eight weeks.
The first six months and you are also the only employee are the two that get read at the wrong time: the first is read too late, after a rate has already been said out loud, and the second is read too early, when working alone still sounds like the good part. Somebody selling the same skill with an employer in the middle wants choosing work, getting it, and moving up. Somebody building a thing that keeps selling after it is made wants building something that runs without you selling your hours, which is a different arithmetic and not a bigger version of this one. The quote itself is a document before it is a number, which is being understood, in every form the job takes. All of it sits under running work, getting paid, and the software it happens in.
The three practices already paying 25 are what this page leaves unfinished. The calculation gives her a defensible number for everybody new and says nothing about the three practices who have budgeted her old one into their own quotes, and going to 47 in one step with an existing client is a different conversation from quoting it to a stranger. There is a page for raising rates below, and it is one of the few here where the honest answer is that some of those clients do not survive the change.