A client emails on a Tuesday asking for something you'd normally deliver in two weeks — by Friday. That's a rush job, and it deserves a different price than your normal one, not because the work is harder, but because saying yes means dropping other commitments, working outside your usual hours, or turning away the next client who asks. This calculator takes your normal price and a turnaround tier and gives you the exact surcharge and total to quote, so the number comes from a stated policy instead of a number you make up under pressure.
How it works
Pick the tier that matches how much you're compressing your normal timeline. Standard rush (+25%) fits a deadline that's meaningfully tighter than usual but still gives you room to plan around it. Expedited (+50%) fits a genuinely compressed schedule — days instead of weeks. Emergency or same-day (+100%) fits anything that forces you to drop what you're doing right now, and effectively doubles your price.
The math is a straight percentage on top of your base price: the surcharge is your base price times the tier percentage, and the rush price is your base price plus that surcharge. There's no hidden curve or diminishing scale — a 50% tier always adds exactly half your base price, whether that base price is $200 or $20,000.
Worked example
Say your normal price for a project is $1,000, and the client needs it on an expedited timeline — the +50% tier.
- Surcharge: $1,000 × 50% = $500
- Rush price: $1,000 + $500 = $1,500
That's the number to put on the quote or invoice: $1,500 total, with the $500 rush surcharge itemized separately if you want the client to see exactly what the expedited timeline cost them. Itemizing it also makes the policy legible — the client can see it's a standard tier, not an arbitrary markup invented for their request.
If the same client instead asked for same-day delivery — the +100% tier — the surcharge would jump to $1,000 and the total to $2,000. That jump is intentional: doubling your price for the tightest turnaround reflects that you're very likely turning away other work, not just moving your own schedule around.
How to interpret your result
The rush price is what to quote or invoice — it already includes your normal price plus the tier surcharge, so there's nothing left to add. If you itemize on the invoice, list the base price and the surcharge amount as separate lines that sum to the rush price; that's exactly how this calculator computes it, so the two numbers will always reconcile down to the cent.
Treat the tier percentages as a starting policy, not a rigid law. If a client's rush request barely disrupts your schedule, there's nothing wrong with waiving the fee or knocking it down a tier. Conversely, if a rush request means canceling plans or working through a weekend, charging above the 100% tier is reasonable — some industries routinely go to 150-300% for the most extreme turnarounds. The value of having tiers at all is that you can point to a consistent policy instead of negotiating a number from scratch every time.
Methodology & sources
The formula is surchargeAmount = basePrice × (surchargePercent / 100) and rushPrice = basePrice + surchargeAmount, which is algebraically the same as basePrice × (1 + surchargePercent / 100) — this calculator computes the surcharge first and adds it to the base price so the two figures always sum exactly, even after rounding to the cent.
The 25/50/100 tiers reflect common freelance practice for pricing expedited work: a survey of freelance pricing guidance puts typical rush surcharges in the 25-100% range depending on how compressed the deadline is, with heavier surcharges reserved for same-day or overnight requests — see Freelancermap's guide to rush fees and Millo's breakdown of how to apply rush fees for more on how different freelancers structure their tiers. Neither source is a binding standard — a rush fee is a business policy you set, not a rate imposed by regulation — so treat these tiers as a sound default to adjust once you know your own market and how much a compressed deadline actually costs you.