The Netherlands has made quite the stir in the global freelance community. From simple, yet epic, tax regimes, to the ease of immigration and registering your business, and the vibrant culture surrounding it all.
Freelancers in Holland are doing well, and their ranks are growing. Yet the amount of hours you’re able to bill for is still directly linked to your income—same as anywhere. Not everyone has a solid grasp on the fine balance between billable and non-billable time, and what this means for your bottom line; some even wonder what the realistic amount of weekly-billable hours may be.
These questions have answers, and we’ll be exploring how you can maximize your billable hours, reduce lost time to unpaid admin work, and make the most of your ZZP journey in the Netherlands.
2025’s average billable hours in the Netherlands: 29!
Freelancers in the Netherlands bill around 29 hours per week on average, according to the Knab ZZP Uurtarievenboekje 2025 (an annual survey of 20,000 self-employed professionals).
In other words, the typical Dutch freelancer is not billing a full 40-hour workweek to clients—far from it. Those ~29 “billable hours” represent the time freelancers spend on projects that generate income. The remaining working hours each week often go toward other necessary tasks (which we’ll dive into shortly).
It’s important to note that this 29 hours/week figure is an average across many professions. Actual billable hours can vary widely by sector and role. Knab’s research shows that your industry has a big influence on both your hourly rate and how many hours you can bill:
- High-billables in technical and public sectors: Certain fields manage to bill significantly more hours than the average. Freelancers in construction or technical trades often have high billable hours—a freelance welder clocks about 40 billable hours per week on average. Likewise, independent contractors in sectors like engineering, IT (ICT), and government report well above-average billable hours (often 32–33 hours/week) alongside high hourly rates.
- Fewer billable hours in creative and service fields: In contrast, freelancers in creative industries or certain services log fewer billable hours. Photographers have the lowest number of billable hours of all freelancers, at around 18 hours per week (Knab-Uurtarievenboekje-2025.pdf). Many freelance designers, writers, consultants, and creatives find that only a fraction of their work time is paid client work—the rest goes into designing concepts, revisions, marketing or simply waiting for the next project.
While ~29 billable hours/week is the overall average for Dutch freelancers, your personal number may be higher or lower depending on your field and how you work. If you’re in a hands-on trade or IT consultancy with continuous client assignments, you might bill well above 30 hours most weeks. If you’re in a creative or advisory role that involves lots of behind-the-scenes work, your paid hours might be much less. Understanding where you fall on this spectrum is critical, as it directly impacts your earning potential.
Non-billable hours impact on your earnings
Why don’t freelancers simply work and bill 40 hours every week, like a salaried job? The short answer: because running a freelance business involves a lot of non-billable tasks. These often include things like:
- Administrative duties
- Marketing
- Communication
Think about everything you do in a week that isn’t project work for a client. This might include: drafting proposals, answering emails, bookkeeping, chasing invoices, updating your portfolio, social media marketing, research and training, networking, and so on. All of that takes time, and every hour spent on these tasks is an hour not billed to a client.
According to Knab Uurtarievenboekje, many freelancers acknowledge this reality. One striking example from the report is a professional photographer who notes:
“For every hour behind the camera, you often spend 2 to 4 hours on things like preparation, editing, administration, and communication.”
In other words, if they had a 1-hour photoshoot (billable), they may invest up to 4 additional hours in planning, post-processing, emailing clients and other support work (unpaid).
Over a week, these necessary but non-billable activities add up and effectively limit how many billable hours you have available.
Billable vs non-billable: Why this matters for your income
Your income = billable hours × hourly rate (if you charge per hour). If you can only bill, say, 20 hours out of a 40-hour workweek, then to earn a full-time equivalent income, your hourly rate needs to be high enough to cover the 20 hours not billed.
Those non-billable hours are essentially an overhead cost paid in time. More billable time can directly boost your earnings or, alternatively, you need to charge a higher rate to compensate for fewer billable hours.
Many new freelancers underestimate how much time administrative and business development tasks will consume. They might optimistically calculate income based on full 8-hour workdays devoted to client work, which is rarely realistic. The average of 29 billable hours/week we saw means roughly 3 out of 5 working hours are billable, and the rest are not. That ratio will vary, but it highlights why a freelancer’s hourly rate is usually higher than an employee’s—it has to account for all those unbilled hours spent keeping the business running.
2 ways non-billable hours can impact your earnings
- They limit the total hours you can sell to clients
- They represent unpaid labor
Unpaid labour and added stress is a fast track to burnout. Your goal should be to limit non-billed hours to the absolute minimum.
7 tips to maximize your billable hours and grow your income
While some non-billable work is inevitable, efficient freelancers develop habits and systems to maximize the time they spend on billable, income-generating activities.
Take our 7 actionable tips to help you spend more of your week on paid projects and reduce your overall admin time, while increasing the time you spend not having to work.
- Track and analyze your time: Use time-tracking tools to calculate your billed/unbilled hours and find improvable areas.
- Dedicate admin time: Block out specific slots for administrative duties, and focus only on those tasks.
- Minimize distractions and low-value activities: Every interruption has a cost. Limit how often you check email or social media during your core work hours, and politely set boundaries on meetings or calls that aren’t truly necessary.
- Automate and streamline: Consider adopting invoicing software to automatically generate and send invoices, track payments and handle reminders for late payments. Use templates for proposals and contracts to avoid starting from scratch each time. Our team at Xolo has identified 19 tasks freelancers can automate or delegate to save time.
- Learn to say “No” (or charge for it): Ultra-detailed proposals for prospects who haven’t committed, or endless “scope creep” requests on projects? It might be time to set firmer boundaries. Qualify your leads to focus on serious clients. Consider charging for extensive discovery meetings or consulting sessions that were previously free, or keep them short and to the point.
- Prioritize long-term clients and projects: Juggling many small gigs can increase non-billable overhead. If possible, aim for a stable base of a few good clients or longer projects. You’ll spend less time on acquiring new business and more on doing billable work for existing clients.
- Optimize your pricing strategy: Ultimately, you probably won’t make all 40 hours billable. To increase your freelance income in the Netherlands, you may also need to raise your rates over time. If you’ve reached your limit of billable hours, increasing your hourly (or project) rate will directly boost your earnings without needing more hours.
Wondering how to raise your freelance rates? Our fresh article is chock-full of tips to help you increase your freelance income the smart way.
Gaining just one extra billed hour a week means 52 extra hours a year. While that math may be simple, the results are phenomenal. Freelancers work hard, and it’s our job to get paid.
Earn more time—with Xolo! We’re built for freelancers
Xolo is designed for freelancers and ZZP’ers in the Netherlands, from top to bottom. If you’re dedicated to spending less time on admin and accounting, and more time on growing your business, Xolo is ready to help.
Stop! Wrestling with Excel or bookkeeping software, and use Xolo to create and send professional invoices in a few clicks.
Xolo also helps with VAT calculations and filings, ensuring you charge the correct VAT on your invoices and submit your VAT returns on time. That’s billable hours back in your pocket.
Stop! Stressing over tax filing. Xolo provides accounting support to make sure your annual income tax filings are done correctly and optimally—meaning you may get positive deductions you didn’t know existed. Xolo keeps you compliant and on-time every year, every time. Another cha-ching!
Stop! Using Google Translate on official documents! For expat freelancers, one of the biggest time-wasters can be trying to decipher Dutch documents or correspondence from the Belastingdienst Tax Office.
With Xolo, you’ll get a dashboard and support in English or Dutch, so you won’t waste hours translating. That’s hours spelled B-I-L-L-A-B-L-E.
By recognizing the impact non-billable hours make and taking steps to streamline or delegate tasks, you can boost your billable hours and your income. Simple changes like better time management, automation and setting boundaries can free up multiple hours for client work each week.
Start maximizing your week today! Explore Xolo’s services for freelancers in the Netherlands and see how you can reclaim more of your workweek for billable, rewarding work. Explore Xolo Netherlands now and take the next step toward a more efficient, profitable freelance business.
