Consultant utilization rate calculator.
Enter your team’s available and billable hours to see your billable utilization, how it compares with published benchmarks, and how many billable hours sit between where you are and 75%.
Your team
Example numbers to start. Use averages per consultant for a typical week.
Available hours are the hours a consultant could work after holidays and time off. Decide whether internal projects count, and use the same rule every time.
Billable utilization
67.5%
- SPI’s optimal reference point
- 75.0%
- Average across firms, 2025
- 66.4%
- Billed at standard rates, per year
- $2,173,500
Runs in your browser. Nothing you type is saved.
How the numbers work.
Utilization is billable hours divided by available hours. The gap to 75% is the difference between 75% of available hours and the hours your team bills today, multiplied by working weeks and headcount. The calculator values those hours at your average bill rate.
The benchmarks come from SPI Research’s Professional Services Maturity Benchmark as summarized by Deltek: 75% is the level SPI considers optimal, and 66.4% was the 2025 average across more than 500 firms. Treat 75% as a firm-wide reference point rather than a target for every person.
A low rate is usually a staffing, pipeline or scheduling problem. If the rate looks healthy but revenue doesn’t, look at realization instead: write-downs and fixed-fee overruns. Our post on utilization tracking that people actually use covers both, and how to get timesheets you can trust. If your time, budgets and invoices live in separate tools, see software for professional services firms or add up what your current tools cost.
Using the calculator.
How do you calculate utilization rate?
Divide billable hours by available hours. A consultant with 40 available hours who logs 28 hours to client work in a week is at 70%. For a team, add up billable hours and available hours across everyone first, then divide, so part-timers don’t skew the result.
What is a good utilization rate for consultants?
SPI Research treats 75% billable utilization as optimal for professional services firms. Deltek’s summary of SPI’s 2026 benchmark puts the 2025 average at 66.4%, the lowest in the survey’s history. Set targets by role: people who sell, manage or run the practice bill fewer hours by design.
What counts as available hours?
Usually contracted hours minus holidays and paid time off. Some firms also remove internal projects. Any of these choices is fine as long as you apply it consistently, because changing the denominator changes the rate for exactly the same work.
Why does the revenue figure say ‘before realization’?
The calculator values extra hours at your standard bill rate. Realization, the share of billable work that actually becomes revenue after write-downs and fixed-fee overruns, is usually below 100%, so the real figure is lower.
Is my data stored anywhere?
No. The calculator runs in your browser and nothing you type is saved or sent.
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