What the client expects each month.
Including admin, calls and scope creep.
Months.
A guaranteed income is worth something. How much?
An estimate for negotiation, not advice. The right answer also depends on how much you value predictable income and whether the client would otherwise be idle time.
Calculated entirely in your browser. Nothing you enter is sent anywhere.
How to use it
Enter your hourly rate
What you would charge for the same work billed by the hour.
Enter both hour figures
What the retainer covers, and what you honestly expect to spend.
Set your certainty discount
Guaranteed income is worth something. Decide how much before you negotiate.
How the calculation works
The headline figure is the retainer divided by the hours you actually expect to spend, not the hours it nominally covers. That gap is where retainers quietly become bad deals.
The certainty discount is the part most people never make explicit. Predictable monthly income genuinely is worth less per hour than ad-hoc work, because it removes the cost of finding the next client. Ten percent is a common figure. Putting a number on it turns a vague feeling into a floor you can negotiate against.
If your real rate falls below that floor, the calculator suggests a monthly figure that would clear it. That is the number to counter with.
What this calculator does not do
It cannot value the relationship. A retainer with a client who refers work, or who would otherwise fill idle time, is worth more than the arithmetic shows.
It assumes you can predict the hours. If you have never worked with this client, your estimate is a guess and the real figure is usually higher.
It does not model unused hours. Some retainers roll over, some do not, and that changes the picture considerably.
Questions
Are retainers worth it?
They are when the discount you give is smaller than the value of predictable income. This calculator puts both sides in the same unit so you can see.
What discount is reasonable?
Ten to fifteen percent is common. Beyond twenty you are usually subsidising the client rather than buying certainty.
Should I cap the hours?
Yes, in writing. An uncapped retainer is an invitation to scope creep, and it is the single most common way these go wrong.
What if I go over?
Agree the overage rate up front. Discovering the question mid-project, after the work is done, never ends well.
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