Hourly to salary calculator
Multiply hourly rate by hours by 52 weeks and you get a number — just not always the right one. This adjusts for the unpaid time off and benefits gap that every simple hourly-to-salary calculator skips, because that gap is usually the actual reason two offers that look similar on paper aren't.
Naive annual (hourly)
$52,000
Real annual (hourly)
$50,000
Total comp: hourly
$50,000
Total comp: salary
$58,000
The naive comparison ($52,000 hourly vs $50,000 salary) says the hourly job wins by $2,000. Once 10 unpaid days off and each side's benefits value are factored in, the real comparison ($50,000 vs $58,000) says the salary offer actually wins by $8,000 — a complete reversal of what the naive math suggested.
See how your Real annual hourly income compares — anonymous, no account needed.
Who reaches for this
Wants the real annual comparison, not the naive one that assumes both jobs pay for a full 52 weeks.
Wants to see what a fixed salary with benefits is actually worth against a variable hourly rate with none.
Wants to know what hourly rate actually matches a given salary once realistic unpaid time off is factored in.
Wants concrete numbers for the benefits-value gap to bring into a compensation conversation, not just a gut feeling that one offer seems better.
Wants to translate experience-based expectations from one pay structure into an honest equivalent in the other.
The formula, and the trap in the naive version
The naive version of this calculation — rate × hours × 52 — is not wrong, exactly. It answers "what would this rate add up to if every week of the year were paid," which is a fair description of how a salary works but rarely an accurate description of how hourly pay works. The gap between that assumption and reality is exactly what the adjustment above corrects for.
260 working days is the standard figure this calculator uses as the denominator — 52 weeks × 5 working days, before any time off is subtracted. It's a convention, not a law: a position built around a different schedule (four 10-hour days, a six-day retail week, or a compressed schedule) would need a different total-working-days figure to stay accurate, though the core logic — actual paid days divided by the standard total — holds regardless of the exact schedule shape.
Why the naive calculation overstates hourly income
A salaried employee is paid the same amount every pay period regardless of holidays, sick days, or approved vacation — the number of actual working days in a given month does not change what shows up in the paycheck. Most hourly positions work differently: pay is tied directly to hours actually worked, so a week that includes an unpaid holiday, a sick day, or unrequested time off simply pays less than a full week.
The standard hourly-to-salary formula implicitly assumes 52 fully-paid weeks, borrowing an assumption that is true for salaried pay and applying it to hourly pay where it usually isn't. Ten unpaid days off — two work weeks — is a modest, realistic figure for a position with no paid holidays or sick leave, and it alone reduces real annual income by roughly 3.8% below what the naive calculation shows, before any benefits gap is even considered.
The relationship is linear and easy to sanity-check by hand: every 5 additional unpaid days off costs almost exactly $1,000 at this nominal income level, since $52,000 spread across 260 working days comes to roughly $200/day. Scaling that per-day figure to a different nominal income gives a quick mental estimate of the unpaid-time-off gap without running the full calculation — useful for a rough comparison before entering exact numbers into the calculator above.
A full worked example
Someone is deciding between an hourly job paying $25/hour at 40 hours a week and a salaried offer of $50,000/year with $8,000/year in benefits value (health insurance plus a 401(k) match) that the hourly job doesn't provide.
The naive calculation: $25 × 40 × 52 = $52,000 for the hourly job, versus $50,000 for the salaried offer. On this number alone, the hourly job pays $2,000 more a year — the salaried offer looks like the worse deal.
Now adjust for 10 unpaid days off a year at the hourly job (a reasonable estimate with no paid holidays or sick leave): real worked days = 260 − 10 = 250 out of 260. Real annual hourly income = $52,000 × (250 ÷ 260) = exactly $50,000 — identical to the salary offer's raw number, once unpaid time off is priced in.
Add each side's benefits value: the hourly job offers none, so its total compensation stays at $50,000. The salaried offer's $8,000 in benefits value brings its total to $58,000. The real comparison: $58,000 versus $50,000 — the salaried offer actually wins by $8,000 a year, a complete reversal of what the naive $52,000-versus-$50,000 comparison suggested.
The adjustment doesn't always favor the salaried side, though — a second scenario shows the reverse. A $30/hour position with only 5 unpaid days off (a generous hourly job with several paid holidays) against a $55,000 salary offering just $3,000/year in benefits value: nominal hourly income is $30 × 40 × 52 = $62,400, real annual income adjusted for 5 unpaid days is $62,400 × (255 ÷ 260) = $61,200, and the salary's real total comes to $55,000 + $3,000 = $58,000. Here the hourly job still wins by $3,200 a year even after the adjustment — the correction changes the margin, but doesn't automatically flip every comparison in the salary's favor. Which side wins depends entirely on the actual unpaid-days and benefits-value inputs for the two specific offers being compared, not a general rule that either pay structure is inherently better.
The difference between the two scenarios comes down almost entirely to two inputs: how much unpaid time off the hourly job actually carries, and how much benefits value the salaried offer actually includes. Small changes in either figure can shift which side wins, which is exactly why plugging in the real numbers for a specific pair of offers matters more than relying on either worked example as a stand-in for an actual decision.
What benefits are actually worth, in dollars
"Benefits" is often treated as a vague plus rather than a real dollar figure, which is exactly why it gets left out of most hourly-to-salary comparisons. Two benefits carry the largest, most estimable value for a typical full-time offer.
The number that belongs in the benefits-value field is the employer's actual contribution — not the full premium, and not a vague sense that benefits are "nice to have." A pay stub or benefits summary usually states this directly; when it doesn't, the total premium multiplied by the employer's typical coverage share (70-86%) is a reasonable estimate to start from. Whatever the actual employer-sponsored benefits are worth, that figure is what makes a salaried offer's real value visible instead of hidden inside a vague "plus benefits" line.
Smaller benefits — dental and vision coverage, short-term disability insurance, an employee assistance program, a gym subsidy — carry real but harder-to-estimate value individually, usually in the low hundreds of dollars a year each. They rarely move the comparison meaningfully on their own, but a full benefits package that stacks several of them together can add up to a genuinely significant total worth including if a specific offer's summary breaks the value down explicitly.
Setting a competitive hourly rate to match a salary
The same formula runs cleanly in reverse for an employer trying to set an hourly rate that genuinely competes with a salaried offer elsewhere in the market, rather than one that only looks competitive on a naive comparison.
Rearranged to solve for the hourly rate: rate = target total compensation ÷ (hours/week × 52 × ((260 − unpaid days off) ÷ 260)). An employer trying to match a $58,000 total-compensation offer (the $50,000-salary example above) at 40 hours a week, offering no benefits, needs to decide how much paid time off to build in first. Offering full paid time off (0 unpaid days) requires a $27.88/hour rate to match; offering no paid time off at all (10 unpaid days) requires $29.00/hour instead — a real, calculable difference driven entirely by the time-off policy attached to the rate, not just the headline number.
This matters because a posted hourly rate that looks competitive against a salaried role's naive annualized figure can actually undershoot the real comparison once a candidate runs the same adjustment this calculator does — a gap that shows up as unexpectedly weak response to a job posting, or candidates declining offers that looked reasonable on paper.
Adding benefits to the hourly side changes the required rate further, and usually lowers it: an employer offering even a modest health insurance contribution or 401(k) match alongside the hourly wage doesn't need to hit the full target through the hourly rate alone. Running the calculator above with the benefits fields filled in for the hourly side, rather than leaving them at zero, gives a more accurate picture of what rate is genuinely needed to compete — often a lower number than the benefits-free version implies.
When the naive calculation is fine to use as-is
The adjustment matters most when comparing across pay structures. It matters much less, or not at all, in a few common situations.
If both positions have roughly the same unpaid-time-off policy and neither offers meaningful benefits, the naive comparison is already apples-to-apples — the adjustment cancels out on both sides.
If unpaid days off are genuinely close to zero, the naive and adjusted figures converge, since the correction term approaches 260 ÷ 260 = 1.
For a quick sense of scale — "is this roughly a $50k job or a $70k job" — the naive number is usually close enough; the adjustment matters most for a real side-by-side decision between two specific offers.
Neither side has employer-provided benefits or paid time off to adjust for, so the comparison reduces to the hours and rate alone — though both sides should still separately account for self-employment tax.
The common thread across all four situations: the adjustment only changes the answer when the two options being compared differ meaningfully in how much of the year is actually paid, and in how much benefits value each side carries. When those two factors are roughly symmetric between the options, the naive figure and the adjusted figure land close enough together that the extra calculation adds little beyond confirming what a quick mental estimate already suggested.
Common mistakes
This is the single most common mistake driving this exact search — the naive figure assumes 52 fully-paid weeks, which usually isn’t true for hourly pay.
A salaried offer’s health insurance and 401(k) match can easily be worth several thousand dollars a year — leaving that out understates the real value of the offer.
A specific employer’s holiday and PTO policy is knowable, not something to estimate blindly — asking directly gives a far more accurate comparison than a generic assumption.
A position that regularly pays overtime past 40 hours a week can meaningfully change the real comparison — this calculator assumes a consistent hours figure with no overtime unless it’s built into the hourly rate entered.
Schedule flexibility, stability, growth potential, and fit matter alongside the numbers — the real comparison here answers the compensation question, not the entire job decision.
Both the hourly income and the salary offer should be compared on the same basis — gross to gross, or after-tax to after-tax — mixing the two produces a comparison that looks precise but isn’t actually apples-to-apples.
A signing bonus recurs once, not every year — folding it into a recurring salary figure overstates the offer’s real ongoing value relative to the hourly position.
What this calculator can't tell you
This is a planning estimate built from the inputs entered, not a guarantee of what either job actually pays. It doesn't know a specific employer's real holiday and PTO policy — that number has to come from the actual offer or employee handbook, not a generic assumption. It also doesn't model overtime, shift differentials, tips, or bonuses, all of which can meaningfully change an hourly position's real annual income beyond the base rate alone.
It treats the tax comparison as roughly equivalent between the two options, which is reasonable for two W-2 positions but not for a 1099 hourly rate being compared against a W-2 salary — a 1099 rate additionally has to absorb self-employment tax and the full cost of benefits that a W-2 position’s employer partially or fully covers. That comparison needs the self-employment tax and freelancer profitability calculators layered on top of this one, not used as a substitute for it.
It also can't weigh the non-financial parts of a job decision — commute, schedule predictability, career growth, management quality, and simple fit all matter and aren't captured by any compensation calculator. The real comparison this tool produces is one real input to a bigger decision, not the entire decision by itself.
It also assumes a consistent number of hours worked every week, when many hourly positions have variable schedules — retail, hospitality, and gig-style work in particular often fluctuate week to week rather than holding steady at a fixed hours figure. For a position with genuinely unpredictable hours, running the calculation at a realistic average, rather than the best or worst week, and treating the result as a central estimate rather than a guarantee, is the more honest way to use this tool.
Frequently asked questions
Hourly rate multiplied by hours per week, multiplied by 52 weeks. A $25/hour job at 40 hours a week comes to $25 × 40 × 52 = $52,000 a year. This is the number almost every calculator online produces, and it is a real, correct answer to a narrower question than most people asking it actually have in mind.
Because the simple multiplication assumes 52 fully-paid weeks a year, which is true for most salaried positions but rarely true for hourly ones. Hourly workers are typically not paid for holidays, sick days, or vacation unless the employer explicitly offers paid time off — so the naive calculation systematically overstates what an hourly worker actually earns in a year compared to a salaried position with the same nominal hourly-equivalent rate.
It depends entirely on the specific job — some hourly positions offer paid sick leave or holiday pay, others offer none at all. A reasonable starting estimate for a position with no paid time off is 6-10 unpaid days a year (typically federal holidays the business closes for), and more if illness or family obligations are likely to require additional unpaid days. Checking the actual policy at a specific employer, rather than guessing, gives the most accurate comparison.
Not always, but it is far more common than at hourly positions, and critically, a salaried employee is paid the same fixed amount regardless of how many holidays fall in a given pay period — the salary does not shrink because a week included a paid holiday. That structural difference is a real part of why a salaried offer with paid time off is worth more than its raw number alone suggests, on top of whatever separate PTO days it explicitly includes.
Total employer-sponsored health insurance premiums are commonly cited as approaching $18,000/year for family coverage as of 2026, with employers typically covering somewhere between 70% and 86% of that total depending on the plan and employer size — commonly several thousand dollars a year even for single coverage alone. The employer's actual contribution, not the total premium, is what belongs in the benefits-value field here, since the employee would otherwise have to buy equivalent coverage out of pocket.
The average employer 401(k) match in 2026 runs roughly 4-6% of compensation, with the most common structure being a 50% match on employee contributions up to 6% of salary — meaning an employee who contributes enough to capture the full match effectively receives up to 3% of salary in matching funds. On a $50,000 salary, that is commonly $1,000-1,500/year in employer contributions the hourly-to-salary comparison should account for if the hourly position offers no equivalent.
No — a 1099 contractor rate needs to additionally absorb self-employment tax and the full cost of any benefits, which a W-2 hourly rate does not, since a W-2 employer already handles half of payroll tax automatically. Comparing a 1099 hourly rate against a W-2 salaried offer needs the full effective-rate treatment covered in the freelancer profitability and self-employment tax calculators, not just this unpaid-time-off adjustment alone.
This calculator assumes a consistent number of hours worked per week with no overtime factored in. An hourly position with regular overtime pay (typically 1.5× the base rate past 40 hours a week under federal law) can meaningfully change the real comparison — running the overtime hours through a dedicated overtime calculation and adding that to the base figures here gives a more complete picture for a job that regularly includes overtime.
Reduce the unpaid-days-off input by however many days actually are paid — if a position offers 5 paid holidays out of a typical 10-day estimate, enter 5 unpaid days instead of 10. The calculator is built specifically around unpaid days, so any paid time off already provided at the hourly job should be subtracted from the estimate before entering the final figure.
Not necessarily — this calculator answers the compensation question, not the entire job decision as a whole. Job stability, schedule predictability and flexibility, commute, growth potential, and how much the work itself is enjoyed all matter alongside the dollar comparison, and a modestly lower real income at a better-fit job is a reasonable, common trade-off many people make deliberately and don't regret.
Not automatically — enter an expected annual bonus as part of the salary-offer figure or the benefits-value figure if it's a reliable, recurring amount, but a one-time signing bonus shouldn't be annualized into an ongoing comparison, since it doesn't recur every year the way the base compensation does. Treating a signing bonus as if it repeats annually overstates the salaried offer's real ongoing value relative to the hourly position, sometimes substantially in the first year of the comparison.
The unpaid-days-off adjustment doesn't apply, since both salaried offers are typically paid the same regardless of holidays taken — the comparison in that case comes down to the base salary plus each offer's actual benefits value, which the salary and benefits-value fields here can still be used for directly, just without the hourly-specific correction.
This calculator compares two pay structures at the same location and cost of living — it doesn't adjust for a move between cities with different housing costs, taxes, or general price levels. A hourly-versus-salary comparison across two different metro areas needs a separate cost-of-living adjustment layered on top of the real-compensation figures this tool produces, since a higher real income in a much more expensive city can still leave less purchasing power than a lower one somewhere cheaper.
Comparing salary to salary directly works fine for two salaried offers, since both are typically paid the same fixed amount regardless of holidays or time off taken. It breaks down specifically when one side of the comparison is hourly, because hourly pay ties directly to hours actually worked and paid — the exact assumption a straight salary-to-salary comparison quietly skips over without anyone noticing until the real numbers are run.
Run your own numbers above, free, or check the employee vs. contractor calculator for the classification side of this decision.
Glossary:Fully-Loaded Cost
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