Both answer "what should I charge" from an AI chat, but they compute different things. Trove Vault's Freelancer Rate Calculator runs on the Apify platform and returns five billing models (hourly, daily, weekly, monthly retainer and project minimum) priced from market-rate data, billed per 1,000 rates computed. Ours is a local MCP server that does one division family over the numbers YOU supply: your desired after-tax income, your expenses, your billable hours and your tax rate. It reports the gross revenue needed, the billable hours per year, the minimum hourly rate and the pre-tax rate it was lifted from. No market data: the formula is in the source and every output is reproducible by hand.
| Fact | Ours | Freelancer Rate Calculator (Trove Vault, Apify) |
|---|---|---|
| What it computes | Minimum hourly rate from your own inputs: desired after-tax income, expenses, billable hours, weeks, tax; plus break-even and a what-if scenario table (2 to 12 scenarios) | Five billing models (hourly, daily, weekly, monthly retainer, project minimum) from market-rate data, after taxes and overhead |
| Data source | The numbers in the call; the formula is in the source, no table ships | Market-rate data on the Apify platform |
| Network | None. Pure arithmetic, nothing stored | Hosted on Apify; every call runs on their infrastructure |
| Install/entry path | One-click hourly-rate.mcpb bundle, npx, or hosted URL. No account, no key | Apify account, OAuth on first MCP use, or a Bearer API token |
| Price | Everything free: three tools, no metering, no key | From $0.85 per 1,000 rates computed |
| Licence | MIT | Proprietary platform actor, community maintained |
Pick it when the question is market-shaped: what are other freelancers with my profile charging, what does a retainer look like at market rates. That needs rate data we deliberately do not carry. Its per-1,000-rates pricing is fine for occasional lookups, and the five-model output (hourly through project minimum) is broader than ours.
Pick ours when the numbers that matter are your own: the income you want to keep, what your business actually costs, how many of your week's hours are billable and your real tax rate. A market median cannot know those; our formula can, and it shows its work - gross revenue, billable hours, the pre-tax rate the answer was lifted from - so every number is auditable in the source. Everything is free and unlimited, nothing is stored, and no call leaves your machine.
Ours, one click: download hourly-rate.mcpb from
the latest release and open it in Claude Desktop. No JSON, no terminal.
Or by URL, with nothing installed. /mcp/connect mints a free token and prints the ready line:
claude mcp add --transport http hourly-rate https://mcp.zovo.one/mcp/hourly-rate/t/<token>The npm package is not published yet, so the line below returns a 404 today. It is here because it is what the config becomes the day that changes:
claude mcp add hourly-rate -- npx -y @theluckystrike/mcp-hourly-rateExact config file paths per client are on the setup pages.
Trove Vault's Freelancer Rate Calculator does, on the Apify platform. Ours deliberately does not: it computes from the inputs you give it, so the answer is reproducible by hand and the formula is in the source.
Ours, entirely: three tools, no metering, no key. The Apify actor charges from $0.85 per 1,000 rates computed.
No. It is pure arithmetic over the call's inputs: no store, no files, no network, no telemetry.
The actor's pricing, models and MCP configuration are published on its Apify Store page at apify.com/trovevault/freelancer-rate-calculator. Read on 2026-10-12.