How to price sick days and holidays into your freelance rate

There’s a number that goes wrong before most freelancers even open a spreadsheet.

It’s not the tax estimate. It’s not the hourly rate. It’s the number of days per year where money actually comes in.

Most freelancers assume they’ll bill something close to 220 days. They won’t. 185 is closer to reality for most. That 35-day gap — invisible at the time of pricing, very visible in December — is the reason a lot of freelancers end the year short without understanding why.

Where the 220-day assumption comes from

The logic is straightforward: 52 weeks, 5 working days per week, minus roughly 20 vacation days and 10 public holidays. You land around 210 to 230 days, round to 220, and that becomes the denominator in your rate calculation.

The math isn’t wrong. The inputs are.

Sick days. The average knowledge worker takes 7 to 10 sick days per year. When you’re employed, those are paid. When you freelance, they’re not. A week of flu or a bad back is a week of zero revenue — and it happens to everyone, every year.

Prospecting and admin gaps. The weeks where you’re between projects, writing proposals, chasing leads, or buried in admin have no billable output. These aren’t failures — they’re the overhead of running a solo business. Two to three weeks per year is a conservative estimate.

Dead time between contracts. When one client wraps and the next starts two weeks later, those two weeks exist. Some of them are recoverable. Some aren’t.

Add it up honestly: 10 sick days, 15 prospecting days, 10 days of gaps between projects. That’s 35 days — exactly the distance between 220 and 185.

The calculation that accounts for this

Here’s the rate formula that doesn’t pretend those days don’t exist.

Step 1 — Target annual gross income Start with your net take-home target. Say €60,000. If your effective tax rate is 40%, you need approximately €100,000 gross.

Step 2 — Add annual business costs Tools, software, equipment depreciation, professional development, accounting. For most freelancers: €4,000 to €8,000. Call it €6,000. Total to earn: €106,000.

Step 3 — Realistic billable days

• 260 working days (52 weeks × 5)
• Minus 11 public holidays: 249
• Minus 5 weeks of vacation: 224
• Minus 10 sick days: 214
• Minus 15 prospecting / admin / gap days: 199

Round to 185 as a conservative floor.

Step 4 — Billable hours per active day Freelancers who track honestly bill 5 to 6 hours on active client days. Not 8. Use 6.

Step 5 — Divide €106,000 ÷ (185 days × 6 hours) = €95.50/hour

Now run the same calculation with the 220-day assumption: €106,000 ÷ (220 × 6) = €80.30/hour

The gap: €15.20 per hour. Nearly 19% underpriced — not because of a wrong tax rate or an optimistic billability estimate, but because of an unrealistic day count.

For day-rate clients, the same logic applies: €106,000 ÷ 185 = €573/day versus €106,000 ÷ 220 = €482/day.

What that gap looks like over a year

€15/hour sounds like a rounding error. It isn’t.

At 185 days × 6 hours × €15 = €16,650 of missing income annually. That’s the equivalent of more than three months of living expenses for most freelancers.

The practical effect: freelancers priced on the 220-day formula regularly run short in the fourth quarter. They’ve worked as hard as they planned. They’ve delivered what they quoted. The money just isn’t there. They attribute it to a slow year. In reality, they priced for a working year that doesn’t exist.

Adjusting the number for your actual situation

185 is a starting estimate. Your real number depends on how you work.

If you have two or three long-term retainer clients with predictable monthly workloads, slow weeks are fewer. You might realistically bill 200 days.

If you’re project-based with gaps between contracts — especially if your work is seasonal — 170 to 180 days may be more accurate.

If you’re in your first two years, with a pipeline that’s still building, price on 160 days. You’ll end the year with a buffer instead of a shortfall.

The best number isn’t an estimate at all. It’s last year’s actual count. How many days did revenue come in? That figure, pulled from real data, is your denominator for next year.

Where the data comes from

Tracking billable days requires knowing which days had client work — and which didn’t.

The simplest method: your calendar. If you’re already naming events with [ClientName], Timescanner shows the breakdown by client and period automatically. You can see exactly which days had billable activity and count the real total at year-end.

That number, combined with your billable vs. non-billable ratio, gives you the two inputs the rate calculation actually needs.

Without tracking, you’re estimating both. Estimating hours is common. Estimating days is invisible — nobody warns you about it, and the shortfall only shows up twelve months later.

The rate conversation this enables

Once you’ve run the calculation with real numbers, the rate conversation with clients changes.

You’re not asking for more because you feel undervalued. You’re correcting an arithmetic error. The number you need to charge, to earn what you planned while accounting for the days where nothing comes in, is just the math.

If the result feels high compared to what you’re currently charging, that’s the gap you’ve been subsidizing. The freelance rate calculation everyone uses assumes there are no costs beyond visible expenses — sick days, slow weeks, and gaps between contracts are treated as if they don’t exist.

They do exist. They happen every year. The rate needs to account for them.

Timescanner reads your calendar events to show billable activity by client and period. At year-end, you get the actual billable day count — the real denominator for next year’s rate. Works with any iCal-compatible calendar.