Converts pay between hourly, daily, weekly, biweekly, monthly and yearly, all at once. Enter whichever figure you know and the rest follow, so an hourly job offer and a salaried one can be compared without doing the arithmetic in your head.
Key terms
- Hours a week — what the pay is actually for. Two salaries are only comparable once you know the hours behind them.
- Paid weeks a year — 52 unless you take unpaid time off. Paid holiday still counts as a paid week.
- Hours a year — hours a week × paid weeks. The divisor everything hourly is built on.
How it works
Every figure is converted to an annual amount first and then back out to each period. Doing it that way means the six answers can never disagree with each other.
From a yearly salary
hourly = annual ÷ (hours a week × weeks a year)
Weekly is annual ÷ weeks, biweekly is twice that, and monthly is annual ÷ 12. At 40 hours over 52 weeks the hourly divisor is 2,080.
Two shortcuts that give the wrong answer
A month is not four weeks. It averages about 4.33, so multiplying a weekly wage by four loses roughly a month’s pay over the year. $1,000 a week is $52,000 a year and $4,333 a month, not $4,000.
Biweekly is not monthly halved. A year holds 26 biweekly pay periods, not 24, because two months carry three paychecks. $2,000 every two weeks is $52,000 a year — $4,000 more than the 24-period assumption suggests.
2,080 hours or 2,087?
40 hours across 52 weeks is 2,080, and that is the usual private-sector divisor. Federal pay uses 2,087, set in law, because a calendar year is not exactly 52 weeks and leap years lift the average slightly. On a $60,000 salary the difference is about ten cents an hour — immaterial when comparing two offers, and not immaterial when it is written into a pay rule.
How to use this calculator
- Enter the pay figure you know and pick the period it covers.
- Set the hours and days you actually work, rather than the contracted minimum, if the two differ.
- Read across the other periods. To compare two offers, put both into yearly figures at their own real hours.
- Open the unpaid time off option if part of your year is unpaid — the yearly total falls while the hourly rate stays put.
Frequently asked questions
Is this before or after tax?
Before. These are gross figures. Take-home pay depends on your tax code, filing status, deductions and where you live, none of which this calculator asks for — so it stops where the guessing would start.
How do I compare a salaried job with an hourly one?
Convert both to hourly at the hours each really involves. A $70,000 salary at 50 hours a week is $26.92 an hour, less than a $30 hourly job at 40 hours — and the hourly job may pay overtime on top, while the salary usually does not.
What about overtime?
Not included. Enter your base hours and base rate; overtime is normally paid at a premium and varies week to week, so folding it into an average rate would hide both.
Does paid holiday change my hourly rate?
No. Paid time off is already inside a salary, so leave the year at 52 weeks. Only reduce the weeks when time off is genuinely unpaid — that lowers the annual total without changing what an hour is worth.
Why is the daily figure different from my day rate?
The daily figure here is your annual pay spread over the days you work. A contractor’s day rate is priced separately and is usually higher, because it has to cover unpaid gaps, holiday and benefits that a salary already includes.
