How to Price a Freelance Retainer (The 80/90 Percent Rule)

Quick answer

Price a freelance retainer at 80-90% of what the committed monthly hours would cost at your normal hourly rate. Bill $100/hour, and the client wants 15 hours a month? Full cost is $1,500. Priced at 85%, the retainer lands around $1,275/month. That gap isn't a favor to the client — it's what you're charging for guaranteed monthly income and not having to re-sell the engagement every 30 days.

A retainer sits between two familiar models: a flat-rate project fee and open-ended hourly billing. The client pays upfront for a reserved block of your time, not for hours already completed. Haven't decided whether a retainer fits this client at all? Start with when a retainer beats hourly billing before you price one.

Step-by-step: pricing your retainer

Start with your real hourly rate and monthly hour estimate

Don't back into a retainer price from a number you've never actually charged. Use your current hourly rate, and get an honest estimate of how many hours the work takes in a typical month — not your best month, your normal one. Not confident in that number yet? Work through estimating your hours accurately first. A retainer priced against an hours estimate that's off by 30% doesn't fix the underbidding problem — it just makes it recurring.

Apply the 80-90% band

Once you have a rate and an hours estimate, multiply them for the full hourly-equivalent cost, then discount 10-20% depending on how much you value the certainty:

The math behind this comes down to what you're trading away: a smaller discount, closer to 90%, for a new and unproven client; a larger one, closer to 80%, for a long-term client whose retainer effectively removes a chunk of your monthly sales work.

Sanity-check against real numbers

Formulas are a starting point, not a mandate. Actual freelance retainers vary a lot by scope and specialty. Some freelancers run $475/month retainers for a 4-hour weekly minimum; fractional specialists tend to start around $800/month for a handful of strategy hours. If your formula output lands far outside what similar freelancers in your field charge, take a second look before you send the proposal.

Common problems and fixes

Don't discount past ~15%

A retainer priced much below 80% of hourly cost stops reading as a fair trade and starts reading as a favor. And clients treat favors as negotiable — which is exactly the scope creep a retainer is supposed to prevent. If a prospective client is pushing for a steeper discount to "lock in the relationship," that's a signal to hold the line, not soften it.

When to flip it and charge a premium instead

The discount isn't automatic. Some freelancers argue the opposite case: once your calendar is close to full, a retainer isn't buying the client a bulk discount. It's buying guaranteed access to time you'd otherwise have to turn away. In that situation, a 10-25% premium over your normal hourly rate is a defensible position. You're pricing scarcity, not volume.

Define scope before the first invoice

Every retainer needs a written answer to three questions: how many hours are included per month, what happens to hours that go unused, and what rate applies to work beyond the allocation. Unused hours typically either roll over for one month or expire — pick one and say so in writing. Handling this after a dispute is much harder than handling it upfront. A statement of work that stops scope creep is the right place to put these terms.

Revisit the price later

A retainer price set today shouldn't be permanent. As your rate goes up or the relationship proves out, raising your rates with an existing client applies to retainer clients the same way it does to hourly ones — just on whatever renewal cadence you built into the original agreement.

Doing this with Pomlo

Pricing a retainer only holds up if the hours you're billing against actually match the hours you're working. Pomlo's time tracking shows you, in real time, whether a retainer client's real workload is tracking to the estimate you priced it on — so you catch drift in week two, not at the next renewal. Projects and clients keep retainer hours cleanly separated from any one-off work for the same client. Reports make it easy to see, at a glance, whether a retainer is running under, over, or right on the hours you agreed to.

Pomlo is available on iOS, Android, and the web. Download it from the App Store or Google Play and start tracking the hours your next retainer is priced on.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the 80/90 percent rule for freelance retainers?

It's a pricing shortcut: take what the committed monthly hours would cost at your normal hourly rate, then price the retainer at 80-90% of that number. A $100/hr rate for 15 hours a month is $1,500 at full cost; priced at 85% that's roughly $1,275/month. The gap isn't a favor — it's the price of guaranteed, predictable income and not having to re-sell the client every month.

Is a retainer always cheaper for the client than paying hourly?

Usually, by design — that's the trade the client is making for committing in advance. But the discount has a floor. Going much past 15% off starts to read as a favor rather than a fair trade, and clients treat favors as negotiable, which is exactly the scope creep the retainer was supposed to prevent.

Should I ever charge more for a retainer instead of less?

Yes, in specific cases: when your calendar is close to full and the retainer is buying reserved availability rather than an hours discount, or when the client needs guaranteed same-week turnaround. In that situation a 10-25% premium over hourly is a defensible position — you're pricing scarcity, not committed volume.

How do I handle unused or overage hours on a retainer?

Decide upfront and put it in writing: unused hours either roll over for a short window (commonly one month) or expire, and hours beyond the monthly allocation bill at a stated overage rate — often your normal hourly rate or slightly above it. Track hours as you go so neither side is guessing at month-end.

Conclusion

The 80-90% rule is a starting formula, not a universal law. Take your hourly-equivalent cost for the committed hours, discount it 10-20% to reflect the certainty you're both getting, and hold the line under about 15% off so the retainer stays a fair trade instead of a favor. Know when to flip the formula and price a premium instead. Whichever direction you land on, get the hours, rollover terms, and overage rate in writing before the first invoice goes out.