How long will your money last?
Your runway is the number of months you can cover your costs if no new work arrives. It is the single most useful number a freelancer can know, and almost nobody knows it.
Free · no signup · runs entirely in your browser
Everything you could actually live on — current account, savings, emergency fund.
Only income you are confident about: retainers and signed work. Leave out maybes.
Personal and business together — rent, food, insurance, software, tax set-aside.
−$1,000/mo net
6+ months — you're in a strong position
Your freelance runway
Runs out around November 2027
Projected savings · 12 months
Why this is the number that matters
Salaried employees have a notice period. It is not much, but it is a known quantity — a month, three months, a fixed amount of warning before the income stops. Freelancers have no equivalent, and most never calculate one. The result is a specific and very common failure: work dries up in a month you did not see coming, and you take the first contract offered rather than the right one, at whatever rate is on the table.
Runway is the replacement for the notice period. It converts the vague background anxiety of self-employment into a number of months, and a number of months is something you can act on.
The arithmetic
Three inputs, one division. Your net burn is monthly expenses minus reliable monthly income — the amount your savings drop by each month. Runway is savings divided by net burn.
| Input | What to put in |
|---|---|
| Savings | Money you could genuinely live on. Not a pension you cannot touch, not an emergency fund you have decided is untouchable. |
| Monthly income | Committed work only — retainers and signed contracts. Not the proposal you sent last week. |
| Monthly expenses | Personal and business combined, including your tax set-aside. Money owed to the government is not runway. |
If income exceeds expenses your runway is unbounded and the number stops being interesting — which is the goal, and also the reason the calculator shows an infinity symbol rather than pretending to forecast.
What the bands mean
- Under 3 months — critical. Shorter than a sales cycle. Any new client you win now will probably not pay you before the money runs out. Prioritise collecting what you are already owed over finding new work.
- 3 to 6 months — a real cushion. Enough to run a proper search rather than take the first offer. This is the window in which prospecting is cheap and calm.
- 6 months or more — strong. Enough to turn work down, raise your rates, or take time off without it costing you the business.
The three things that move it
Only three levers exist, and they are not equally available. Cutting expenses works immediately but has a floor. Raising rates works permanently but slowly — see the rate calculator for what you should actually be charging. Collecting money you are already owed is usually the fastest of the three and the one people forget: an overdue invoice is runway sitting in someone else's bank account.
Why this number goes stale
A runway figure is only true on the day you calculate it. An invoice gets paid, a retainer ends, a laptop dies — and the number you were reassured by last month is now wrong in a direction you did not notice. This is the honest limitation of a calculator: it gives you a snapshot when what you need is a clock.
Common questions
- What is a freelance runway?
- Your runway is how many months you can cover your costs with the money you already have, if no new work arrives. Divide your savings by the gap between what you spend and what you reliably earn each month. It is the freelance equivalent of knowing how much notice period you have — except nobody tells you, so you have to work it out.
- How many months of runway should a freelancer have?
- Six months is the usual target, and the reason is practical rather than arbitrary: winning a new client takes a full sales cycle — pitch, proposal, contract, then thirty days or more before the first invoice clears. Three months is the point at which finding work stops being a plan and becomes an emergency, because you will be negotiating from a position where you cannot say no.
- Should I count income I am expecting but have not been paid for?
- Only if it is genuinely committed — a signed retainer or an invoice already sent. A runway number built on deals you hope to close is a number designed to reassure you rather than inform you. Leave the maybes out and treat anything that lands as a bonus that extends the runway.
- Does this include tax?
- Only if you include it. Money set aside for self-employment and income tax is not yours to spend, so the most accurate approach is to treat your tax set-aside as a monthly expense. If you are not sure what that figure should be, work it out with the self-employment tax calculator and add it to your monthly expenses here.
- Is anything I type here stored or sent anywhere?
- No. The calculation runs entirely in your browser. Nothing is submitted, nothing is saved, and there is no account. Close the tab and it is gone — which is also the limitation: it cannot tell you next month whether the number moved.
This is one number. Runway tracks all of them.
Runway does this continuously from your real invoices, clients and expenses — and tells you what to do about it.
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