Salary Calculator
Enter either an hourly rate or an annual salary — the other converts automatically, along with every pay period in between.
The conversions
Annual salary = hourly rate × hours per week × paid weeks per year. At 40 hours and 52 weeks that's the familiar shortcut: hourly × 2,080 = annual, so $25/hour ≈ $52,000/year, and a quick mental reverse: annual ÷ 2,000 ≈ hourly (within 4%).
Bi-weekly vs. semi-monthly — they're different
Bi-weekly means 26 paychecks per year (every second week); semi-monthly means 24 (say, the 1st and 15th). Bi-weekly checks are smaller but two months a year deliver three of them — a budgeting bonus if you plan around 24 and treat the extras as savings.
Comparing a salaried offer to contract/hourly work
A salaried job's benefits (employer pension/401k match, health coverage, paid vacation, sick days, employment insurance) are commonly worth 20–30% on top of base pay. As a freelancer or contractor you also pay both sides of payroll taxes and cover unbillable time. Rule of thumb: a contractor needs roughly 1.4–1.6× the equivalent employee's hourly rate to come out even.
Comparing job offers properly
Base salary is the headline, but rarely the whole story. Two offers $5,000 apart can be worth the opposite of what they look like once everything is counted. Work through this list before deciding:
- Employer pension or 401(k) match — a 5% match on $60,000 is $3,000 a year of real compensation, and it compounds for decades.
- Health, dental and disability coverage — buying equivalent cover privately can cost thousands annually.
- Paid time off — the difference between 2 and 4 weeks is about 4% of your working year.
- Commute — an extra 45 minutes each way is roughly 375 unpaid hours a year, plus fuel and vehicle wear. Remote or hybrid arrangements have genuine monetary value.
- Bonus structure — discretionary bonuses are not guaranteed income; weight them accordingly.
- Training, certification and progression — often worth more over five years than a modest salary difference today.
Total compensation is frequently 20–30% above base salary once benefits are counted, and that percentage varies enormously between employers — which is exactly where a lower-looking offer can win.
Setting a freelance or contract rate
Converting a salary to an hourly contract rate by dividing by 2,080 is the mistake that ends most freelance careers. As a contractor you cover both halves of payroll taxes, your own benefits, unpaid holidays and sick days, business expenses, and — critically — all the unbillable hours spent on quoting, invoicing, admin and finding the next client.
Working backwards from a target income
Target: the equivalent of a $70,000 salary.
- Add roughly 25% for benefits and employer-side taxes you now cover: $87,500.
- Add business costs — software, insurance, equipment, accounting — say $6,000: $93,500.
- Estimate genuinely billable hours. At 30 billable hours a week for 46 weeks: 1,380 hours.
- $93,500 ÷ 1,380 = $68/hour minimum.
Compare that to the naive $70,000 ÷ 2,080 = $34/hour, and the reason so many freelancers work constantly while earning less than they did as employees becomes obvious.
The single most important variable is the billable-hours estimate. Most freelancers bill 50–65% of their working hours; assuming 100% guarantees underpricing.
Negotiating with the right number
A few points that consistently help:
- Research the range first for your role, region and experience level. Negotiating without a benchmark means negotiating against yourself.
- Let the employer name a figure first where you can. Where salary history questions are restricted by law, you're entitled to decline them.
- Negotiate the whole package. When base salary is fixed by a band, vacation days, a signing bonus, training budget or a review date are often flexible.
- Get it in writing before resigning from anything.
- Convert to per-paycheck terms before accepting, so you know what will actually arrive — the calculator above does this instantly.