Why pay needs converting
Jobs are quoted in whatever unit flatters them: hourly at one employer, salary at another, biweekly in the offer letter. Converting everything to one basis — usually annual gross — is the only way to compare offers, judge a raise, or check that a paycheck is right. This calculator converts an hourly rate into daily, weekly, biweekly, monthly and annual pay from your actual schedule (hours per week, weeks per year), and shows estimated take-home beside the gross figures.
The conversion formulas
Weekly = rate × hours. Monthly = annual ÷ 12 (not weekly × 4 — a month averages 4.33 weeks, and the ×4 shortcut underpays your mental math by 8%). Biweekly = weekly × 2, which is why a year holds 26 biweekly checks, not 24.
Weeks per year: the hidden variable
The standard assumption is 52 weeks — paid year-round including holidays and vacation. If you are a contractor or seasonal worker with unpaid weeks off, enter the weeks you actually work and get paid for. Three unpaid weeks at $30/hour full-time is $3,600 a year: quoting the job at "about $62,400" would overstate it to roughly $58,800 of real pay.
Gross vs take-home
Gross pay is the conversion basis because it is exact. Take-home depends on tax brackets, state, retirement contributions, health premiums and more; the single-rate estimate here gives a planning figure. For a US paycheck with federal brackets and FICA modeled, use the Paycheck Calculator; to see how deductions arise, the Tax Calculator walks through the brackets.
Worked example
At $30 an hour, 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year: weekly pay is $1,200, biweekly $2,400, monthly $5,200, and annual salary $62,400. A competing offer of “$60,000 salary” is actually the smaller offer — the conversion makes that visible in seconds.
How to use this calculator
- Enter the hourly rate.
- Enter the hours actually worked (and paid) in a typical week.
- Enter paid weeks per year — 52 if vacation and holidays are paid.
- Set an estimated tax rate if you want take-home figures alongside gross.
- Use the annual gross figure as the yardstick for every offer and raise comparison.
Overtime and salaried-exempt traps
These conversions assume straight time. Hourly workers earning overtime (typically 1.5× past 40 hours/week in the US) should add those hours at the higher rate separately. Salaried workers should still convert: a "$70,000 salary" that routinely demands 55-hour weeks pays like $24.47/hour — sometimes less than the hourly job it replaced.