Utilization Rate Calculator
Your utilization rate is the share of available working hours you bill to clients: billable hours divided by available hours, times 100. For agencies, 65 to 75 percent is a common benchmark – treat it as orientation, not gospel, because the right rate depends on roles, pricing, and internal workload.
Result
€0/h
Minimum break-even rate
Hours
Revenue potential
Optional, enables revenue potential calculation
Utilization rate
Current utilization
70 %
Healthy zone
Pistacio benchmark for agencies: 65–75%.
At 70% utilization
Your team is currently running at 70.0% utilization. That's within the healthy range. Well positioned! Your team is within the Pistacio benchmark (65–75%). Keep it consistent and monitor the trend.
Disclaimer
This calculator is for guidance purposes only and does not replace professional financial advice.
All benchmarks and calculations are based on data available in 2026 and are not legally binding.
How to calculate your utilization rate, with an example
The formula: utilization rate = billable hours / available hours x 100. Available means the time someone can actually work in a period, not the hours written into their contract. Example: Anna has 40 available hours in a week and bills 26 of them. Her rate is 26 / 40 x 100 = 65 percent; the other 14 hours went to meetings, admin, and business development. The calculator above runs this math per person or for the whole team, weekly, monthly, or yearly.
Why capacity is not the same as contract hours
A 40-hour contract does not deliver 40 billable hours a week. Vacation, public holidays, and sick days typically remove six to eight weeks of contract time per year in Germany. On top of that sits necessary internal work: meetings, proposals, training, invoicing. Measuring utilization against contract hours flatters your numbers and misprices projects. Always divide by hours that were genuinely available.
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