How to quote a freelance project: hours, buffer, expenses and deposit

Clients like fixed prices. They know what they will pay before they sign. For you, a fixed price is a bet: if the work takes longer than planned, you absorb the difference. A good quote makes that bet in your favor.

The formula

Quote = (hours × rate) + buffer + expenses

Then split it into a deposit and a balance.

Step 1: estimate the hours

Break the project into tasks small enough to estimate. A website might be: discovery call and brief, wireframes, design of three page types, two revision rounds, build, testing, launch.

Estimate each task. Add them up. Most people underestimate the parts they enjoy least: meetings, revisions, file prep and handoff. List those explicitly.

Step 2: use your real hourly rate

Use a rate that covers taxes, expenses and unbilled time. If you have not worked that out, start with how to calculate your freelance hourly rate. In our example, the minimum came out at $94.35. We round up to $95.

Step 3: add a contingency buffer

The buffer pays for what you cannot see yet: a slow client, an extra round of feedback, a technical snag. It is a percentage of labor.

A simple guide:

Situation	Buffer
Repeat client, work you have done many times	0–10%
New client, familiar work	10–15%
New type of work or unclear scope	20–25%

If the scope is so unclear that you would need more than 25%, it is often better to sell a paid discovery phase first and quote the rest afterward.

Step 4: add pass-through expenses

Expenses are things you buy for this client: stock photos, fonts, plugins, hosting, printing, travel. List them separately and pass them through at cost. Do not put a buffer on them. Clients accept clear expense lines more easily than a padded labor number.

Step 5: set the deposit

Ask for part of the total before you start. Many freelancers use 50% for projects under a few weeks, and split longer projects into milestones. The deposit protects you if the client disappears, and it shows they are committed.

Worked example

Line	Calculation	Amount
Labor	40 h × $95	$3,800.00
Buffer	15% of $3,800	$570.00
Expenses	at cost	$250.00
Project total		$4,620.00
Deposit (50%)	due on signing	$2,310.00
Balance	due on delivery	$2,310.00

The buffer raises your effective rate to $109.25 per estimated hour ($4,370 of labor and buffer ÷ 40 hours).

What happens if the project runs over

Here is the same 40-hour estimate at different buffers. The last two columns show what you actually earn per hour if the work takes 46 or 50 hours instead of 40.

Buffer	Total quote	Per hour if 40 h	If 46 h	If 50 h
0%	$4,050.00	$95.00	$82.61	$76.00
10%	$4,430.00	$104.50	$90.87	$83.60
15%	$4,620.00	$109.25	$95.00	$87.40
25%	$5,000.00	$118.75	$103.26	$95.00

With no buffer, a 25% overrun drops you to $76 an hour, well under the $94.35 minimum. With a 15% buffer, you still clear your minimum at 46 hours. With 25%, you hold $95 even at 50 hours.

Write the scope into the quote

The price only works if the scope is fixed too. Put these in writing:

• Deliverables. What exactly the client gets.
• Revision rounds. For example, two rounds of revisions per deliverable.
• What is not included. Copywriting, photography, hosting, ongoing support.
• Change requests. Extra work is billed at your hourly rate or quoted separately.
• Payment terms. Deposit, balance due date and what happens if payment is late.
• Validity. How long the price holds, such as 30 days.

Remember taxes on the deposit

A deposit is income when you receive it. Set part of it aside for taxes. As a freelancer, you pay self-employment tax of 15.3% on 92.35% of your profit (IRS Topic 554) on top of income tax. Our self-employment tax guide has the 2026 numbers.

Try it

The project quote calculator builds the quote, buffer and deposit split for you. It opens with this example. If you are deciding whether to price by the hour or by the day instead, read day rate vs hourly rate.