Advertised gig rates rarely show the full value of your time. This worksheet helps you compare delivery, freelance, tutoring, care, and task-based work by estimating money left after platform fees, travel, equipment, taxes, unpaid waiting, and other costs.
Overview
The best flexible job is not necessarily the one with the highest headline rate. A delivery opportunity may show a strong payment per order but involve unpaid travel and vehicle costs. A freelance project may offer a better hourly return, yet require time spent finding clients, revising work, or waiting for payment. Tutoring or care work may provide more predictable bookings but less control over location and availability.
To compare options fairly, convert each opportunity into an estimated net hourly return:
Net hourly return = (gross income − work-related costs − estimated tax reserve) ÷ total time committed
Total time committed should include more than the time spent actively completing a task. Add travel, setup, client messages, searching for work, unpaid breaks between bookings, and time required to maintain equipment or a vehicle. If an opportunity includes benefits, paid leave, insurance, or other protections, record those separately rather than treating cash earnings as the whole package.
This approach is useful for comparing job offers and total compensation, but gig work requires extra care because terms, fees, expenses, and worker classification can vary by platform, contract, and location.
How to estimate
Use one consistent time period, such as a typical week or a single project. Avoid comparing a busy week for one option with a quiet week for another. If your schedule changes, create low, typical, and high scenarios.
- Record gross income. Start with the amount offered or expected before fees, refunds, discounts, or deductions. For freelance work, use the agreed project fee. For delivery or task work, include completed-task payments and any clearly stated incentives, but do not assume an incentive is guaranteed.
- Subtract direct fees. Record commissions, booking fees, payment-processing charges, subscription costs, and any other deduction tied to earning the income. Check the current agreement or payment statement instead of relying on an old example.
- Estimate operating costs. Include fuel, mileage, public transport, parking, mobile data, software, supplies, equipment maintenance, protective clothing, insurance, and equipment replacement. Separate one-off purchases from recurring costs.
- Add unpaid time. Count travel to and from work, waiting for assignments, prospecting for clients, quoting, administration, invoicing, and revisions that are not separately paid.
- Set aside a tax reserve. The correct amount depends on your location, total income, expenses, business structure, and worker status. Use local tax guidance or a qualified adviser for a personal estimate. A general salary calculator may not reflect self-employed or contractor obligations.
- Divide by total hours. Use the same definition of time for every option. If you track only active work for one job but all committed time for another, the comparison will be misleading.
A simple worksheet can use these columns: opportunity, gross income, fees, travel and equipment costs, other costs, unpaid hours, paid hours, total hours, tax reserve, net income, and net hourly return.
Inputs and assumptions
Delivery and driving work
Record the distance driven, not just the time shown in the app or booking system. Include fuel or charging, maintenance, tyres, insurance changes where relevant, parking, tolls, and vehicle depreciation. If you use a bicycle, scooter, or public transport, include repairs, charging, fares, and replacement costs. A route that looks profitable before travel may produce a much lower return after a long repositioning journey.
Freelance projects
Break a project into research, communication, planning, production, revisions, file preparation, invoicing, and follow-up. Divide the fee by all of those hours. If a client requests extra work, record whether it is included in the original fee or charged separately. A project with a clear scope is easier to estimate than one with open-ended revisions.
Tutoring and care work
Include preparation, travel between clients, cancellations, scheduling, safeguarding or record-keeping requirements, and supplies. Ask whether travel time is paid and whether cancellations are compensated under the agreement. Do not assume that a booked hour equals an available hour if the schedule creates gaps that cannot be used productively.
Task-based work
For cleaning, repairs, moving, photography, errands, or similar tasks, list tools, materials, transport, platform charges, and time spent communicating with the customer. Confirm who pays for consumables and what happens when a task takes longer than expected.
Keep assumptions visible. For example, you might estimate 10 paid hours, 3 unpaid hours, 40 units of travel cost, 15 units of supplies, and a tax reserve based on your own planning rate. The figures are placeholders, not a prediction of market pay. Replace them with your actual records whenever possible.
Worker protections and legal obligations also matter. Classification rules differ by jurisdiction and contract. Check whether the arrangement affects minimum-pay rules, insurance, leave, reporting, or other protections. You can use our salary after tax guide for context on take-home pay, but treat gig-work tax calculations as a separate question.
Worked examples
The following examples are deliberately illustrative. They show the method rather than current rates or rankings.
Example 1: Delivery work
Suppose a driver receives 180 units of gross income over a week. Platform fees and payment deductions total 20 units. Fuel, parking, and vehicle costs total 35 units. The driver spends 12 hours completing orders and another 4 hours travelling to busy areas and waiting. Before tax, the estimated net income is:
180 − 20 − 35 = 125 units
Total committed time is 16 hours, so the pre-tax return is:
125 ÷ 16 = 7.81 units per hour
If the driver reserves 25 units for tax, the post-reserve income becomes 100 units, or 6.25 units per committed hour. The result should be tested against a quieter week because waiting time can change the outcome substantially.
Example 2: Freelance project
A freelancer agrees to a 240-unit project. Payment processing and software costs total 18 units. Research takes 3 hours, production takes 7 hours, revisions take 2 hours, and messages and invoicing take 2 hours. Before tax, net income is 222 units and total time is 14 hours:
222 ÷ 14 = 15.86 units per hour
If the client adds two unpaid revision hours, the return falls to approximately 13.88 units per hour before tax. This is why scope, revision limits, and a written rate for additional work are important inputs in a freelance comparison.
Example 3: Comparing flexibility
Imagine delivery work produces a higher cash total but requires fixed evening availability, while tutoring produces a lower total but allows you to accept only two short bookings between classes. Record both the financial result and the scheduling result. A lower net hourly return may still fit better if it avoids long unpaid gaps, protects study time, or requires less equipment. The worksheet supports a decision; it does not decide which trade-off is right for you.
When to recalculate
Revisit your comparison whenever an input changes. Recalculate if a platform changes its fee structure, a client changes the project scope, fuel or transport costs rise, equipment needs replacing, your travel pattern changes, or your available hours become more limited. Also update the worksheet after several weeks of real records rather than relying only on an initial estimate.
Use a short tracking period to capture actual results: income received, active hours, waiting hours, travel distance, direct expenses, cancellations, and unpaid administration. Keep receipts and payment records where appropriate. Compare your actual net hourly return with your original estimate and adjust the assumptions.
Before accepting a new opportunity, ask five practical questions:
- What amount is guaranteed, and what amount depends on demand, ratings, tips, or incentives?
- Which fees, expenses, and cancellation risks are transferred to me?
- How much unpaid time is likely between paid tasks?
- What equipment, insurance, tax reporting, or record-keeping will I need?
- Can I stop, decline work, or change availability without a financial penalty?
Finally, compare flexible work with realistic alternatives. A part-time job may include paid training, leave, or more predictable hours; a freelance arrangement may offer control but require more unpaid business development. Our guides to overtime pay and holiday entitlement can help you identify benefits that are easy to overlook when comparing cash rates alone. Recalculate the worksheet when terms or costs change, then choose the option that fits both your financial target and your available time.
