Annotation Insider

Tool

Pay calculator

An advertised hourly rate describes the hours a platform pays you for. It says nothing about the hours around them — onboarding, qualification tests, reading rubrics, refreshing a queue for work that isn't there. Put both columns in one place and the interesting number falls out: what you earn per hour the work actually costs you.

Starts at the median listed midpoint across the priced roles on micro1's board. Replace it with the rate you were actually quoted.

Only the hours a platform pays for.

Onboarding, tests, waiting for tasks, redoing rejected work. The field everyone guesses low.

25%

A placeholder, not advice — nothing is withheld for you on contract work, and what you owe depends on your total income, filing status and where you live. How the set-aside works, then set this from your own situation.

Per hour the work actually costs you

$46.67/hr

$70.00/hr advertised becomes $46.67/hr once the 6 hrs of unpaid time are counted.

Hours worked, all in
18 hrs
Share of your time that is paid
67%
Gross in a week
$840
Moved to set-aside
−$210
Yours to keep
$630
Kept, per hour all in
$35.00/hr

This isn't a forecast, and it can't be. It's arithmetic on numbers you supply — which makes it only as honest as your unpaid-hours estimate.

The rate field starts at $70/hr because that's the median of the listed midpoints across the 313 open roles on micro1's board that publish an hourly rate (synced September 13, 2026). The middle half of those listings sits between $40 and $105 an hour; the lowest is $6 and the highest $400, which are the extremes rather than a typical range. Every figure here is pay the board advertises, not pay anyone has been shown to earn.

How to use this honestly

Track two real weeks before you trust any projection

Unpaid hours is the field everyone guesses at, and guessing low makes every other number on this page look better than your bank account will. Start a timer when you sit down and stop it when you get up — including the stretches spent waiting for tasks, re-reading instructions, and redoing rejected work. Two weeks of real logs beats any estimate, ours included.

A good week is not a month

Task availability fluctuates, sometimes sharply and without warning. Run the numbers twice — once on your best week, once on your worst — and plan your life around the low one. If the low one doesn't work, the platform doesn't work, however good the peak looked.

The set-aside slider is a placeholder, not advice

Independent contract work generally comes with nothing withheld for you, so the money you owe arrives as a bill later. How much depends on your total income, filing status, deductions, and where you live. Our taxes guide covers the mechanism and points you at the primary sources.

Compare effective rates, not advertised ones

A higher advertised rate with a long unpaid qualification gauntlet can lose to a lower one that puts you on paid tasks in a day. The only figure worth putting side by side is the one at the top — and the only way to fill it in accurately is to have done the work and counted the hours. Open roles and the pay each one lists →