The hourly rate punishes skill
Solve a task in three hours instead of ten and you earn less. Billing by effort ties your revenue to your slowness rather than your value, and caps it at the number of days you can work.
Calculate your minimum day rateFor agencies, consultancies and freelancers
Agency pricing: from hourly rate to outcome.
Build a pricing logic that sells the result rather than your hours. In less than 1 hour, with the 9-step framework and AI suggestions at every step.
PricingOS takes you from your service promise through cost coverage and price boundaries to a price you can defend: your minimum day rate, your price corridor and the billing logic that fits what you actually deliver. You finish with your pricing playbook plus an AI Brain that knows your logic and answers the next proposal question.
Get StartedThe three traps in service pricing
The fixed price without a frame
A flat quote with no defined scope becomes an open tab: every extra round comes out of your margin. The problem is not the fixed price, it is the missing frame around it.
The discount born of an empty calendar
A quiet quarter produces discounts that stay in the client base. Today's long-standing client is still paying last year's pipeline panic, and telling peers about it.
How your service pricing takes shape
The same nine steps as for a product, thought through for a service: capacity instead of unit volume, project outcome instead of feature.
Service description
What exactly do you deliver, and what result does the client hold at the end? The outcome, not the activity.
Ideal engagement
Industries, company size, and the budget your ideal client already releases for comparable engagements.
Who you meet in the pitch
The providers you meet in pitches, with their actual day rates and package prices.
Outcome promise
The quantified benefit: hours saved, costs avoided, or additional revenue on the client's side.
Utilisation and costs
Utilisation, billable days, fixed costs and target margin. This is where your realistic minimum day rate comes from.
Day-rate floor
A floor from your capacity math, a ceiling from value and client budget: your corridor per engagement.
Market positioning
Value-based, competition-based or effort-based, plus your position in the market.
Billing model
What you bill for, and in which tiers. The model question for service businesses, from billing time to recurring fees, is covered in depth on the blog.
Proposal logic
The concrete numbers for your proposal, consistent with strategy and model, inside your corridor.
Frequently asked questions about agency and consulting pricing
How do I calculate my minimum day rate?
From billable days and costs, not from market comparison. Take your annual fixed costs, divide by the days you can realistically bill (after business development, holidays, admin and idle time, in practice well below 200) and add your target margin. The result is your floor, not your quote. The free break-even calculator does this math in two minutes.
Hourly rate or fixed price?
An hourly rate fits when scope is open and trust is still forming; a fixed price fits when you can estimate the effort from experience and define the frame cleanly. Economically, a fixed price is almost always better for an experienced provider, because efficiency gains stay with you instead of the client. The precondition is a written scope with a rule for extra requests.
Does value-based pricing work for services?
Yes, if you can quantify the benefit: hours saved, error costs avoided, revenue added. Without that quantification, value-based pricing is a label on an effort estimate. Step 4 of the framework runs exactly that quantification, including the questions to ask the client for it.
How do I introduce a retainer?
A retainer sells availability and a continuing outcome, not a bucket of hours. Define what is guaranteed each month, how unused capacity is handled, and when it gets renegotiated. A retainer that is merely a discount on hours gets cancelled during the first quiet month.
How do I raise prices with existing clients?
With notice, a justification anchored in delivered results, and a clear step. Announce at least one billing cycle ahead, show what has changed since the last price, and consider a transition period for long-standing clients. Your AI Brain knows your pricing logic and drafts the proposal on that basis.
Is PricingOS meant for solo consultants or for agencies?
For both, as long as you sell a service repeatedly. The process is the same; for solo consultants the leverage usually sits in step 5 (billable days) and for agencies in step 8 (model and tiering across several team roles).
Ready for prices that reflect your results?
Start now and build your pricing playbook with the 9-step framework. Your first product purchase comes with a 14-day money-back guarantee.
Get Started14-day money-back guarantee on your first product purchase