Salary Calculator

Why base salary is not the number to compare

A salary offer is a package. The base number is the largest line in it, and it is the line everyone quotes, but it is not the line that decides which offer pays more. A $72,000 offer with a 12% bonus and a 6% match can pass a $78,000 offer with an 8% bonus and a 4% match once the health contribution is added, and it can fall behind again once you divide by the hours the job takes.

For scale: the median full-time wage and salary worker earned $1,232 a week in the third quarter of 2026, which is $64,064 a year across 52 weeks, per the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Both offers used in the example below sit above that line. The useful comparison is offer against offer, and this page puts them on one screen.

The four lines that make up total compensation

Total compensation on this page means four lines, all of them paid by the employer in a normal year:

• Base salary, the fixed annual amount.
• Bonus, entered as a percent of base. A 10% bonus on $70,000 is $7,000.
• 401(k) match, the employer contribution tied to your own deferral, entered as a percent of base.
• Health coverage, the dollar amount the employer pays toward your premium each year. Your own payroll deduction is not part of it.

Paid time off is not a fifth line because it is already inside the base salary. It still changes the answer, which is why the calculator uses it when it converts the package into an hourly value.

Worked example: $78,000 against $72,000

Offer A pays $78,000 with an 8% bonus, a 4% match and $9,600 of health coverage. The cash part is $78,000 times 1.08, which is $84,240. Add the $3,120 match and the $9,600 health line and the total is $96,960, or $8,080 a month.

Offer B pays $72,000 with a 12% bonus, a 6% match and $7,200 of health coverage. Cash is $72,000 times 1.12, which is $80,640. Add $4,320 of match and $7,200 of health and the total is $92,160, or $7,680 a month.

The higher base wins by $4,800 a year, which is 5.2% of Offer B's total. That gap is smaller than the $6,000 difference in base salary, because B claws back $2,400 through the larger bonus and another $1,200 through the richer match. A third of the headline gap disappears once the other lines are counted.

The hourly number that decides close calls

Annual totals hide how many hours each job takes. The calculator counts paid weeks as 52 minus the PTO days divided by five, so 15 days off means 49 paid weeks of work at 40 hours, which is 1,960 hours. Offer B asks for 45 hours across 50 paid weeks, which is 2,250 hours.

Divide the package by those hours and Offer A pays $96,960 divided by 1,960, which is $49.47 an hour. Offer B pays $92,160 divided by 2,250, which is $40.96 an hour. The gap is 21%, not the 5.2% the annual totals showed.

A single offer shows the same effect. A $60,000 base with a 3% match and 20 PTO days is $61,800 of total compensation over 1,920 hours, which is $32.19 an hour. The quick 2,080 hour shortcut gives $60,000 divided by 2,080, or $28.85. The shortcut ignores the match and the paid days off, and it understates the value of the job by $3.34 an hour.

Commute is unpaid, and the table includes it because it is time the job owns. Offer A commutes 245 days at 50 minutes, which is 204.2 hours, so its door-to-door rate falls to $44.80. Offer B commutes 250 days at 30 minutes, which is 125.0 hours, and lands at $38.80. The ranking holds, and the size of the gap grows.

What the 401(k) match is worth, and what it is not

The match is real money, but it arrives with conditions. Most plans require you to defer a set percentage of pay before the employer adds anything, and many match only up to a cap, often 4% or 6% of salary. A 6% match on $72,000 is $4,320 only if you defer at least 6% yourself.

Vesting matters when an offer is young. A three-year graded schedule can leave you with nothing if you move on in year one, which turns the match into a future promise rather than current pay. Ask for the vesting schedule in writing before you treat the match as part of the comparison.

The 2026 employee deferral limit is $24,500, so a high earner cannot scale the contribution up to absorb a bigger match. The IRS announcement on 2026 retirement limits lists the catch-up figures as well: $8,000 for age 50 and over, and $11,250 for ages 60 to 63.

Paid time off has a price, so count it

A day of PTO is worth one day of base pay. Divide base by 260 working days and multiply by the days offered. Offer A comes to $78,000 divided by 260, which is $300 a day, times 15 days, which is $4,500. Offer B comes to $276.92 a day times 10 days, which is $2,769.23.

The 15-day offer is worth $1,730.77 more in time off, and it also lifts the hourly rate, because the same package is spread over 290 fewer hours of work. Two offers with identical totals can differ by several dollars an hour on this alone.

One caution: unused PTO rarely converts to cash at full value. A use-it-or-lose-it policy, or a cap on carryover, turns the $4,500 into a number you have to spend as days away from the desk.

What the total still leaves out

The number this calculator returns is gross. Federal income tax, state income tax and FICA come out of it before the money reaches your account, and a raise that pushes part of your pay into a higher bracket changes the net more than the gross. Run the winner through the take-home pay calculator before you sign.

Salaried status also has a legal floor. The Department of Labor applies a standard salary level of $684 a week, or $35,568 a year, for the executive, administrative and professional exemptions from overtime, per its salary levels page. A salaried role below that line is generally owed overtime after 40 hours in a week, which can be worth more than the difference between two offers.

Equity, signing bonuses, tuition help, commuter benefits and the deductibles inside a health plan are all outside this model. So is the risk that a bonus does not pay out. Treat a bonus as variable until you have seen two years of payouts at the same employer, and spread a one-time signing bonus across the years you expect to stay rather than counting it in year one alone.