As a freelance designer in Dubai, how many billable hours a month do I need just to cover my costs?
Treat one billable hour as the unit you sell: monthly overheads are the fixed costs, your hourly rate is the unit price, and anything that comes with each hour is the variable cost. With 6,500 AED of overheads, a rate of 150 and 20 of cost per hour, you need 50 billable hours a month before you earn anything.
Turning a service into a unit
The calculator is built around one product at one price. A freelancer does not sell a product, but you do sell time. If you bill by the hour, the billable hour is your unit; if you sell fixed-price design packages, the package is. What matters is that the unit has roughly one price and you know what each one costs you.
- Fixed costs: annual software subscriptions divided by 12, a coworking desk, a laptop instalment, internet and your freelance permit.
- Unit price: the hourly rate on your invoices.
- Variable cost per hour: things that only appear when you work for a client, such as a freelance platform's cut spread over the hours, or stock assets bought per project.
Worked example for a freelance designer
Monthly overheads of 6,500, a rate of 150 per hour and 20 of variable cost per hour. The Break-even calculator shows a contribution of 130 per hour, a contribution margin ratio of 86.67%, and a break-even of exactly 50 hours, with revenue of 7,500 at that point.
Fifty billable hours sounds light until you remember that answering messages, writing proposals and updating your portfolio are all unpaid. If only half your working time is billable, you are really working around a hundred hours a month just to reach break-even.
What if you raise your rate to 200?
Same overheads, same variable cost: the contribution rises to 180 and the exact break-even drops to 36.11 hours, rounded up to 37. At 37 hours revenue is 7,400 and profit is 160. Raising the rate by a third of its value frees 13 billable hours every month, hours you can sell to another client or keep for yourself.
The comparison does not tell you whether clients will accept the new rate. The calculator does not predict demand; it shows how many hours each rate asks of you, and the decision stays with you.
Getting a result closer to reality
- Pull your past months of spending together with the Expense summary generator first, so a small recurring subscription is not forgotten.
- Log the hours you actually billed with the Timesheet calculator and compare them with your break-even hours at month end.
- Pay yourself. If you include a salary for yourself in fixed costs, break-even means your own pay is covered too.
Common questions
I charge per project, not per hour. Does it still work?
Yes, if your projects are similar in price. Make the project the unit and the result comes out as projects needed per month.
Does the result include tax?
No. The calculator does not handle tax, so the figures are before any tax.
Can I show amounts in AED?
Yes. The currency list includes AED and SAR among others. The currency only changes how amounts are displayed, not the maths.