How this rate is worked out
There is no official New Zealand hourly rate to look up. This tool is arithmetic, and the only honest way to publish arithmetic is to publish all of it — including the assumptions, so you can disagree with them.
The four assumptions, and where they come from
- Your working year. Hours per week × (52 − weeks off). Both are your inputs. There is no statutory "hours in a working year" figure in New Zealand; the widely-quoted 2,080 is simply 52 × 40 and counts no leave at all. It is an assumption, not a source, and it is the one this calculator exists to reject.
- Your billable ratio. Also your input. Quoting, invoicing, travel, marketing and tool maintenance are real work that no client pays for. Most solo operators land between 50% and 70%; the table on the home page shows what each ratio does to the rate.
- Your costs. Overheads and ACC are separate fields because they behave differently — overheads are largely fixed, while ACC levies scale with liable income and vary sharply by industry classification. Neither is estimated for you.
- Your margin. Profit is not your pay. It is what absorbs a bad quarter, replaces a laptop, and eventually funds time off. Set it to zero and the tool will happily return a break-even rate — it just will not be a rate that survives a quiet month.
What the calculator does not do
It does not model income tax, provisional tax or KiwiSaver — those depend on your structure and are not a function of the rate. It does not know your market. And it does not claim the result is what you are worth: it is the floor below which the business does not work, and competitive positioning goes on top of it.
The formula
working hours = hours per week x (52 - weeks off) billable hours = working hours x billable % revenue needed = (income + overheads + ACC) / (1 - profit %) hourly rate = revenue needed / billable hours
The two statutory figures the surrounding pages do cite — the 15% GST rate and the four weeks' minimum annual holidays — are listed with their sources on the home page.
SOURCE·Arithmetic only — no external rate·REVIEWED JUL 2026