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Project Profitability Calculator
See what a project actually made you: real profit margin, effective hourly rate, the cost of scope creep, and where every dollar went. Built for agencies, freelancers, and consultants.
- No email required
- Runs in your browser
- Downloadable report & spreadsheet
Profit margin
47.3%
Healthy service businesses target a 50–60% gross margin.
- Revenue
- $12,000
- Total cost
- $8,035
- Gross profit
- $5,675
- Effective rate
- $126/hr
- Profit / hour
- $60/hr
- Budget remaining
- $3,965
After overhead, real net profit is $3,965 (33.0% net margin).
Where the money goes
- Labor$4,275
- Contractors$1,500
- Software$200
- Other costs$350
- Overhead$1,710
- Profit$3,965
Solid, profitable project
A 47.3% gross margin is healthy for service work. Save this as your benchmark and price similar projects against it. Don't quote the next one from scratch.
You worked 25 hrs over your quote
Those extra hours cost you $1,575 and dragged your effective rate from $171/hr down to $126/hr. Bill overages as change-orders, or bake a scope buffer into your next quote.
You beat your target rate
An effective $126/hr clears your $110/hr target by $16/hr. This is a pricing pattern worth repeating.
Nothing is uploaded. Every number stays in your browser.
How to read your results
Six numbers that tell you if a project was worth it.
Most profitability calculators stop at "revenue minus costs." The reason projects quietly lose money lives in the numbers underneath, so we surface those too.
Gross margin
Profit as a share of revenue, before overhead.
The single number to compare projects on. Healthy agency and freelance work lands at 50–60%. Below 30% and one late night wipes it out; below zero and you paid the client to work for them.
Effective hourly rate
Revenue ÷ every hour you actually worked.
Your quoted rate is fiction. This is what you truly earned per hour once non-billable time, revisions, and admin are counted. It's usually the number that stings, and the one worth pricing against.
Scope creep
The gap between quoted and actual hours.
The silent margin killer. A project quoted at 70 hours that runs to 95 doesn't just cost more. It drops your effective rate on the whole engagement. We show you the exact dollar cost of the overage.
Overhead
Fixed costs, spread across billable hours.
Rent, tools, software, your own admin time. Most freelancers forget it and call a project 'profitable' that actually lost money after overhead. Add it and gross profit becomes real net profit.
Break-even
The fee that would have covered every cost.
The floor price for this exact scope. Quote below it and you're subsidising the client. We surface it so your next proposal starts from reality, not a gut number.
Budget remaining
Revenue minus every cost, all-in.
What's actually left of the fee after labor, direct costs, and overhead. On a fixed-fee project this is your profit; on an in-flight one it's your headroom before you're working for free.
The math
No black box. Here's exactly how it's calculated.
(hours × internal rate) + contractors + software + other + overhead revenue − labor − contractors − software − other gross profit ÷ revenue gross profit − (hours × overhead per hour) revenue ÷ hours worked (actual hours − quoted hours) × (internal rate + overhead) total cost revenue − total cost Your internal labor rate should be what an hour of delivery costs you (salary or draw plus payroll overhead, divided by productive hours), not what you bill the client.
Tired of calculating this after the project's already over?
FeatureFlight tracks budget, time, and costs as the work happens, so you see margin slipping while you can still do something about it. Live budget-vs-burn, AI risk flags, and profitability on every project, automatically.
- Live budget on every project
- Time tracking that flows straight into project budgets and invoices
- AI forecasts that flag a project going over before it does
- Projected budget and timeline on every project, automatically
Questions
Project profitability, explained.
How do you calculate project profitability?
Project profit is your revenue minus every cost to deliver it: internal labor (hours worked × your cost per hour), contractors, software, and other direct costs. Profit margin is that profit divided by revenue. This calculator also factors in optional overhead and scope creep to show your real net profit and effective hourly rate.
What is a good profit margin for an agency or freelance project?
Healthy service businesses target a 50–60% gross margin on project work. Below 30% is thin and leaves little room for revisions or non-billable time; below 10% you're barely covering costs; negative means the project lost money. Net margin, after overhead, is typically lower, and agencies often run 10–20% net.
What's the difference between gross margin and net margin?
Gross margin is revenue minus the direct cost of delivering the work (labor and project costs). Net margin subtracts overhead too: rent, software, admin time, and other fixed business costs allocated to the project. A project can look profitable on gross margin but lose money on net once overhead is included, which is why the calculator lets you add an overhead-per-hour figure.
What is effective hourly rate and why does it matter?
Effective hourly rate is your total revenue divided by every hour actually worked, billable and non-billable. It's what you truly earned per hour, as opposed to the rate you quoted. It matters because scope creep, revisions, and admin quietly erode it: a project billed at a $110/hr rate can deliver an effective rate closer to $70 once all the real hours are counted.
How do I account for scope creep?
Enter the hours you originally quoted alongside the hours you actually worked. The calculator shows how many hours you went over, what those extra hours cost you, and how much they dragged down your effective rate. The fix is usually billing overages as change orders or building a scope buffer into your next quote.
Is the calculator free, and do I need to sign up?
It's completely free and requires no signup, email, or account. Use it as many times as you like and download your results as a branded report or spreadsheet. It's built by FeatureFlight, the all-in-one platform agencies and freelancers use to track project budgets, time, and profitability automatically.
Is my data private?
Yes. Every calculation runs entirely in your browser, so nothing you type is uploaded, stored, or sent to a server. When you download a report or spreadsheet, it's generated locally on your device.
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