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Retainer calculator

A retainer states a fee and the hours it covers. It does not state what you earned per hour once the month is over — that figure moves with every hour you work, and this is it.

The agreement

What the client pays every month, whether the work turns up or not.

What the agreement says the fee is for. Leave it empty if yours does not name a number — the effective rate still works, there is just nothing to compare it to.

The month that actually happened

Everything the client got, not only what was logged against the brief. Calls, revisions and the message threads are hours whoever paid for them.

What you charge per hour beyond the included ones. Leave it empty if your agreement has no overage clause — the page will show you what that costs.

Used only if you press Create this invoice, as the name of the line it becomes.

GuideHow retainers workHow this works, and where the figures go wrong →

What this calculator does not do

  • It does not suggest a fee or a number of hours, and there are no quick-fill buttons on either for that reason. What a retainer is worth depends on your work and your client, neither of which this page knows anything about.
  • It does not track a prepaid balance across several months. That is a different arrangement — money paid up front and drawn down per job — and the invoice calculator already does it with a deposit against the lines.
  • It does not know which hours count. Calls, revisions, scoping and the long message threads are the ones that go untracked and then turn up in the effective rate anyway, which is the argument for counting them here.
  • It does not keep anything. Nothing is written to your browser's storage while you use it and nothing is sent to us, so the figures are gone when you close the tab. Press Create this invoice if you need a document: the fee and any overage are handed to the invoice generator in this tab, cleared as soon as it opens, and saved there as a new invoice alongside any you already have.

Related

To check the rate this month implies against the one your year actually needs, use the freelance rate calculator. For how many hours a year holds once time off is out of it, there is the billable hours calculator. To invoice hours at a rate rather than a fixed fee, use the hourly invoice calculator.

Last updated 21 September 2026