A flat fee per assignment — one memorized number, quoted for most bookings — is the fastest way to answer "what do you charge?" on the phone. It stops working the moment a booking's travel, timing, or staffing needs differ from whatever booking the number was built around, because none of that is tracked separately in a single figure.
A flat fee per assignment is quick to quote and easy for a client to hear. What it does not do is separate the price into anything an interpreter can check against a specific booking — it does not add travel and mileage for a booking that is further away, it does not apply an after-hours differential to an evening or weekend request, and it cannot flag the one thing RID's own guidance says to check on a long, high-stakes booking: whether it should be staffed with a team.
This calculator bills the greater of hours requested or your booking minimum, adds portal-to-portal travel time and mileage, applies an evening/weekend or holiday differential, and flags — never auto-prices — a two-interpreter team recommendation on assignments RID's Standard Practice Papers name as long or high-stakes enough to need one.
| Question | Where to answer it |
|---|---|
| What do I charge for a routine, nearby, standard-hours booking? | Either one — a flat fee is fine if travel, timing, and setting rarely change. |
| What does travel and mileage actually add to this booking? | This calculator — a flat number does not know how far today's assignment is. |
| Does this evening or weekend request change what I should charge? | This calculator's differential, not a flat fee — a memorized number does not know what day it is. |
| Should this legal, medical, or mental-health booking be a team? | This calculator's team-interpreting finding, computed from RID's own guidance, not a flat fee — a lump sum tracks no staffing at all. |
| Is anything I enter uploaded anywhere? | No. The calculator runs entirely in your browser; nothing is sent to a server. |
All three start from the same $65/hour rate. A flat fee built around a typical booking prices all three identically; this calculator does not.
| Booking | A flat per-booking fee | This calculator | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 hour, 20-minute travel each way, 10 miles round trip | $130.00 (2-hour minimum, no travel) | $180.03 (minimum + travel time + mileage) | $50.03 in unbilled travel and mileage |
| 3-hour booking, Saturday evening | $195.00 (standard-hours rate) | $292.50 (evening/weekend ×1.5) | $97.50 missed differential |
| 3-hour legal deposition, team recommended | $195.00 (single-interpreter rate) | $390.00 (two-interpreter team) | $195.00 — one interpreter priced for work RID's guidance says two should share |
The flat fee is not wrong on any one of these by design — it is the same number every time, and only one of these three bookings happens to match whatever assignment it was originally sized around. The other two are quietly under-quoted by the exact thing a single memorized figure cannot see.
One number an interpreter has memorized and quotes for most bookings — often built around their usual hourly rate and the commonly cited two-hour minimum. It is fast to say on the phone or in a text and easy for a client to hear, which is why many freelancers default to it for a routine-looking booking.
Travel. A flat number sized around the two-hour minimum can look right for a nearby booking and still leave real portal-to-portal drive time and mileage uncharged the moment the assignment is further away — a memorized number does not know how far today's booking is.
The after-hours differential. A flat fee built around a standard-hours rate does not distinguish a weekday afternoon from a Saturday evening, so it quietly under-quotes the booking that is actually costing the interpreter their weekend.
No. A flat fee is a price, not a staffing check. Whether a long legal, medical, or mental-health assignment should be staffed with a two-interpreter team depends on the setting and length, per RID's own Standard Practice Paper guidance — a memorized number has no way to flag that, and quoting it as-is prices one interpreter for work the field's own guidance says two should share.
No. The calculator this page links to runs entirely in your browser; nothing you enter is uploaded.