What this calculator does
Hiring a full-time employee costs more than their listed salary once payroll taxes, benefits, and overhead are included. This calculator compares that fully-loaded employee cost against paying a freelancer by the hour for a comparable amount of work.
How the calculation works
Total employee cost is the base salary multiplied by (1 + benefits load percentage), reflecting the common practice of estimating total employment cost as a loaded percentage on top of salary. Total freelancer cost is simply the hourly rate multiplied by the estimated hours needed for the year. The difference between the two shows which option is cheaper for the inputs given.
This is a simplified cost comparison for general planning purposes; it doesn’t capture differences in management overhead, availability, quality, or non-monetary factors that also matter when choosing between hiring approaches.