The BDG hourly rate calculator – Viable fees for designers and freelancers

Many designers and freelancers are familiar with this problem: hourly rates don't just fall from the sky.

Rather, they are the result of a business calculation. Unfortunately, many designers are unsure about their own hourly rate.

It's not always easy to accurately assess one's own value, especially considering the current competitive landscape and the minimum income required to make a living. Periodic surveys of fees and salaries within the industry confirm this.

But that's no reason to despair, dear designers. This is where the BDG hourly rate calculator in. This free tool is ideal for quickly determining commercially viable fees with just one click, fees that reflect the individual life and working circumstances of designers.

The BDG Professional Association of German Communication Designers eV helps to close gaps in the commercial training of designers and supports young colleagues in starting their careers.

last year BDG Founders' Guide (BDG designers can order the Founders' Guide at the reduced price of €16.95), which also deals with the calculation of hourly fees.

The BDG hourly rate calculator is the complementary calculating machine for the logical calculation model presented there.

The idea behind this model is to calculate the hourly rate necessary to secure one's livelihood based on four values ​​– the available working time, individual costs, and entrepreneurial decisions regarding the risk of failure and profit expectations.

Should the actual hourly rate deviate from the results of the calculator, it will become apparent which risks are not covered and what standard of living is actually achievable if the calculation is too low.

“Intuitive hourly rates are useless. With this calculator, designers gain a solid basis for negotiating fees,” emphasizes BDG President Christian Büning. “Hourly rates lose their often-assumed arbitrariness. Those who can explain their calculations have a clear advantage. We hope that our colleagues will be able to use these results to argue more effectively with their clients – who are generally receptive to sound business arguments.”

The calculated hourly rate serves as the basis for calculating fees for concept development, design, execution, and administrative tasks such as meetings or presentations. Those who do not wish to incur the expense of verifying compliance with usage rights can use this hourly rate to cover basic usage rights without any restrictions. Those who itemize usage rights separately can use the BDG fee widget to calculate the usage factor and add it to the design fee.

The BDG hourly rate calculator is free to use. It is a gift from BDG designers to the entire industry.

We hope that the calculator will help prevent price dumping at its source: in the cost calculation. And we hope that reliably calculated fees will lead to a fairer design market. Because designers are capable of it.

The BDG hourly rate calculator can be used free of charge at www.bdg-kalkulator.de