PeoplePerHour Income Calculator

What Platform Fees Do to Freelance Income

A freelance platform takes its cut before the money reaches you, so the figure agreed with a client and the figure that lands in your account are two different numbers. The International Labour Organization's 2021 review of digital labour platforms found that platforms commonly charge a commission to workers, and that on web-based platforms those worker-side fees tend to run higher than the fees charged to clients. This calculator turns that gap into an amount: enter how many projects you take in a typical month, what an average one pays, the platform's commission rate and your payment processor's rate, then the number of months you want to look at. The result is net earnings over that period, with monthly gross, monthly net, total fees and net per project shown underneath.

How Platform Fee Structures Are Built

Fee structures come in a few recognisable shapes rather than one standard rate. Some platforms charge a flat percentage on everything. Some tier the rate by how much you have billed a particular client over the life of the relationship, so the same client costs less the longer you work together. Payment processing usually sits on top as its own percentage, sometimes with a fixed amount per transaction, and cross-border work can carry a currency conversion spread as well. Rates also move: an OECD study of self-employed online freelancers recorded freelancers being caught out by unilateral changes to the fees their platforms charged, and raised fee transparency as an open policy question. That is why the two fee rates here are inputs rather than built-in assumptions, and why the current figures from your own account statement are what the fields expect.

Worked Example

Take eight projects a month at 150 each, a 15% platform fee and a 3% payment fee, over twelve months. Monthly gross is 1,200. The platform takes 180 and the processor takes 36, leaving 984 a month. Across a year that is 11,808 net against 14,400 gross, with 2,592 going to fees, an 18% reduction, and 123 net per project rather than the 150 on the invoice. Two rates that sound small individually combine to just under a fifth of revenue, and because both are percentages the deduction grows in step with volume: doubling the project count doubles the fees along with the gross.

What the Calculator Does Not Model

Both fees here come off gross revenue at the same time. Some platforms apply the payment charge to what is left after commission instead, which produces a slightly smaller total deduction, and a fixed per-transaction amount is not modelled at all. That last one matters most on small projects, where a flat charge can be a larger share of the invoice than the percentage sitting next to it. Also outside the model: promoted listings and other paid visibility, time lost to disputes, payment terms that delay cash by weeks, chargebacks, currency conversion spreads, tax withheld at source in some countries, and volume or loyalty discounts that cut the headline rate for established accounts.

What Moves the Net Figure

Leave the timeframe aside and four inputs drive the result. Project volume and average project value both scale gross revenue, so a ten per cent change in either produces exactly the same net figure: 12,988.80 against the baseline 11,808. The two fee rates work the other way, each percentage point coming straight off the top, so on 14,400 of annual gross one point of platform fee is 144 a year. The mix between platform and direct work shows up by setting the platform rate to zero: the same volume then returns 13,968 rather than 11,808, putting the commission at 2,160 a year. Direct billing carries costs this model does not price, including contracts, invoicing, credit control and handling disputes without a platform's mediation, and platform terms often restrict moving a client off-platform, particularly early in a relationship.