Retainer pricing calculator

Enter what your business costs to run and how many hours you can really bill. The calculator gives you a cost-based hourly rate, the overage rate and the monthly price of each plan. It runs in your browser; nothing you type is sent anywhere.

Defaults are a hypothetical two-person studio. Replace them with your numbers. Amounts in USD, but the math works in any currency.

Costs and margin
Everything you pay with or without work, including team pay and your own salary.
Capacity
50–65% is realistic for most small studios once admin, sales and meetings come out.
Rates and plans
Overage = hours beyond the client's balance. 1.25x is the usual default; 1.5x if your capacity is tight.

Result · updates as you type

Your rates

Hourly rate
$96
Overage rate
$120
  • Costs + margin per month$18,200
  • Billable hours per month190.1 h
  • Hourly rate before rounding$95.75
PlanHoursPer monthPer yearCapacity
Care4$384$4,6082.1%
Growth10$960$11,5205.3%
Partner20$1,920$23,04010.5%

Capacity = the plan's hours as a share of your billable hours per month. Hosting is billed separately.

How the calculator works

It uses the cost-plus method: start from what the business costs to run, add a margin, and spread it over the hours you can actually bill. Four formulas, the same ones in the spreadsheet that comes with The Retainer Kit:

Billable hours = people who bill × working hours per person × billable share

Hourly rate = fixed monthly costs × (1 + margin) ÷ billable hours, rounded

Overage rate = hourly rate × overage multiplier, rounded

Plan price = plan hours × hourly rate

With the defaults: 2 × 160 × 59.4% = 190.08 billable hours. $14,000 × 1.30 = $18,200, divided by 190.08 is $95.75, which rounds to $96. Overage at 1.25x is $120 (at 1.5x, $144). Plans of 4, 10 and 20 hours come to $384, $960 and $1,920 a month. The full reasoning, with a cost breakdown, is in how to price website maintenance retainers.

Choosing the inputs

  • Fixed costs: rent or coworking, software, servers you don't bill to clients, equipment, accounting, insurance, and pay for everyone including you. If you leave your own salary out, the rate only covers expenses.
  • Margin: profit on top of costs, for a cushion and slow months. Twenty to thirty percent is a common starting point.
  • Billable share: the hours that end up on a client report. Admin, sales, meetings, learning and context switching eat the rest. If you don't know yours, track one month; most small studios land between 50% and 65%.
  • Overage multiplier: 1.25x if overage is occasional and you have room, 1.5x if your schedule is tight. Higher than that and clients start rationing requests.

Reading the results

Compare the hourly rate with what similar studios charge where you sell. If yours comes out higher, dropping it means losing money on every hour; the fixes are lower costs, higher utilization, or clients who value the work more. Marketing teams that need landing pages, form integrations and tracking every month usually compare your fee with agency retainers, not with a cheap updates-only plan.

The capacity column tells you how many clients of each size you can carry. At the defaults, a 20-hour plan takes about a tenth of the studio's billable time, so nine of them would fill it with nothing left for overage or new work.

What this calculator leaves out

Three things matter once the plans are sold, and they need a spreadsheet more than a web page:

  • Hosting at cost plus 20–30%, on its own invoice line.
  • An after-hours add-on for critical issues, if you offer one, priced per month for availability.
  • A rollover tracker. If unused hours roll over (up to 3 months, oldest first is a sound default), every rolled-over hour is paid work you still owe. Tracking the balance and its dollar value month by month shows when a crunch is coming.

The Retainer Kit

The spreadsheet version

Excel and Google Sheets: itemized costs, hosting markup, after-hours add-on, an example invoice, and a 12-month rollover tracker with the value of hours owed. Plus the guide, proposal, agreement and report templates on the same numbers.

Get the kit — $29

Launch price (regular $39). 14-day refund. See what's inside.

Free

Monthly report template

Shows the client what the hours did each month: campaign work first, then tasks, the base and the hour balance.

Get the free template