Freelance runway calculator

How many months of runway do you actually have?

Enter your cash on hand, your average monthly costs, and any income you expect. The number updates as you type. No account, no email.

Cash on hand

€

Average monthly costs

€/mo

Expected income, next few months (optional)

€/mo

Runway

6.7months

At this cash, these costs, and this expected income, from today.

01224+

The formula

Runway is how many months your cash on hand covers at your current burn. Burn is the amount your costs exceed your income by, per month. If income covers costs, burn is zero and runway is not the number that matters.

cash on hand ÷ (average monthly costs − expected income) = months of runway

A worked example

€18,000 in the bank, €4,200 in average monthly costs, and one retainer worth €1,500 a month coming in leaves a burn of €2,700 a month. €18,000 divided by €2,700 is about 6.7 months, which is not a deadline so much as the point where the current plan runs out if nothing between now and then changes.

What this number is actually for

Runway moves before it looks like it does.A late invoice does not change what you are owed, but it does shrink this month's runway, because runway only counts cash that has actually arrived.

An optimistic income figure hides the real number. Entering a client you have not signed yet, or a renewal that is not confirmed, tells you the runway you are hoping for, not the one you have.

It sets the floor for negotiating from a stable position. Knowing you have eight months, not two, changes whether you can turn down a bad-fit client or hold a rate under pressure.

It is a monthly habit, not a one-time number. Costs and income both drift, so a runway checked once in January is a guess by June.

FAQ

Freelance runway, answered.

What counts as cash on hand?

Money actually sitting in your business accounts today: checking, savings, anything you could spend this week without waiting on anyone. Leave out invoices you have sent but not been paid, a credit line you have not drawn on, and personal savings you are not planning to use for the business.

Should I include invoices I've sent but haven't been paid yet?

Not in cash on hand. If you expect a specific invoice to land within the months you are looking at, put it in expected income instead, where it lowers your burn rather than inflating cash you do not have yet.

How much runway should a freelancer keep?

There is no single safe number, but three to six months of costs is the range most freelancers settle on once they have been through one slow quarter. Below that, a single late payment or lost client turns into an emergency rather than an inconvenience.

What happens to this number when a client pays late?

Runway shortens, because it only counts cash that has actually cleared. That is the point of tracking it separately from invoiced revenue: an invoice you are waiting on can look fine on paper while the runway underneath it quietly runs down.

This is a snapshot. CFO Mode keeps it current.

This calculator is one moment. Worklyn's CFO Mode reads your actual bank balance, invoices and costs continuously and turns them into two numbers: Safe to Spend, what's genuinely yours this month after tax, costs and what's still owed, and 13 Weeks Out, a rolling cash-flow forecast you can stress-test against a lost client or a late payment.

See CFO Mode

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