This job offer comparison calculator puts up to three offers side by side and works out what each is actually worth. It counts base salary, realistic bonus, annualised equity, employer pension, health cover and allowances, subtracts what the job costs you to attend, and divides the rest by the hours it genuinely consumes — giving a net annual package and an effective hourly rate for each.
Those two numbers frequently disagree with each other, and with the headline salary. An offer that looks $10,000 better on paper can pay less per hour once a five-day commute and a 45-hour week are counted.
Why base salary is the wrong number to compare
Two offers with the same base salary can differ by twenty per cent or more in what they are actually worth. Bonus structures, employer pension contributions, health cover, paid leave and the cost of getting to work all move real money, and none of them appear in the headline figure that people quote to each other.
This calculator does not tell you what a role should pay. It tells you what the offers in front of you are worth once everything is counted, which is the comparison that actually decides things.
The scale of what gets left out is not marginal. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics tracks employer costs for wages and benefits separately in its Employee Benefits Survey precisely because benefits are a substantial share of total compensation. Compare on base alone and you compare the part both employers found easiest to publish, ignoring the part where they differ.
What to count
- Base salary. The guaranteed part, and the only part you can fully rely on.
- Bonus. Enter the realistic figure, not the maximum. Ask what percentage of target was actually paid in each of the last two years — a "20% bonus" that pays out at half is a 10% bonus.
- Equity. For public companies this is reasonably countable. For private ones it is a lottery ticket with a strike price, so many people value it at zero when comparing and treat any payout as upside.
- Employer pension or retirement contribution. Real money, paid on your behalf, and frequently ignored. A 6% match on a lower base can beat a higher base with 3%.
- Health and insurance cover. Count what you would otherwise pay yourself.
- Paid leave. Days of leave have a cash value: your daily rate multiplied by the days. Five extra days is roughly 2% of salary.
- Commute. Both the money and the hours. A 45-minute each-way commute is around 375 hours a year, which is nine working weeks.
How the comparison is calculated
Gross package is base + realistic bonus + annualised equity + employer pension (base × pension %) + health cover + other allowances. Working weeks are not assumed to be 52: the tool subtracts paid leave as 52 − (leave days ÷ 5), so 25 days gives 47 working weeks — which matters because per-week costs are only incurred on weeks you turn up.
Net package subtracts weekly commute cost × working weeks from the gross. Effective hourly rate takes contracted hours plus commuting hours, multiplies by working weeks to get the hours the job really costs you, and divides net package by that figure. Paid leave is valued separately at base ÷ 260 × days, using the standard 260 working days in a year.
The number most people miss: effective hourly rate
A role paying 15% more that expects 55-hour weeks instead of 40 pays less per hour of your life. The calculator works out an effective hourly rate that includes commuting time, because that is time the job costs you even though it is unpaid. It is often the figure that changes someone's mind.
The commute is a pay cut you agreed to in advance
Commuting is the most under-priced term in most offers, because it appears in neither the contract nor the salary discussion. It costs two currencies: money — fuel, parking, a season ticket — which the tool subtracts directly, and time, which people wave away.
Work it through. Forty-five minutes each way, five days a week, across 47 working weeks is 352 hours a year: nearly nine extra 40-hour weeks given unpaid. On an $80,000 offer, adding those hours to a 1,880-hour year drops the effective rate from roughly $42.55 to about $35.85 an hour — a 16% cut that appears nowhere in the paperwork. That is why commute days is not a lifestyle question: cutting two days removes 40% of both the money and the hours at once. To price a real journey, our commute cost calculator breaks the weekly figure down by fuel, mileage and parking first.
Employer pension is the most under-counted line on the page
An employer pension contribution is not a perk. It is deferred cash, paid on your behalf, that you would otherwise fund out of taxed income. People routinely discard a difference worth thousands a year because it is expressed as a percentage rather than a number.
Offer A pays $85,000 with a 3% employer contribution: $2,550 a year. Offer B pays $82,000 with a 7% contribution: $5,740. Offer A leads on base by $3,000 and loses on total compensation by $190 — before you account for pension money compounding untouched for decades while a salary difference gets spent.
Two details to check. Whether the contribution is unconditional or a match requiring you to contribute too — a "7% match" you unlock only by putting in 7% yourself is a different offer from 7% given freely. And the vesting schedule: contributions vesting over four years are worth much less if you leave in two. The US Department of Labor's Employee Benefits Security Administration covers what plan documents must disclose, and the IRS retirement plans pages cover the limits that cap how much of a generous match you can use.
How to value equity without fooling yourself
Equity is where comparisons go wrong most spectacularly, because it is the one component where the number you are shown is a projection rather than a fact.
For a listed company the maths is honest enough: grant value ÷ vesting period. A $120,000 restricted stock grant vesting over four years is $30,000 a year, and the share price risk is real but symmetrical. For a private company none of that holds. The valuation is set by the last funding round rather than by anyone who has bought your shares; preferred stockholders are usually paid out before common stockholders in a sale; and a one-year cliff means leaving at month eleven yields exactly nothing.
The defensible approach is to enter zero for private equity and treat any payout as upside. If that feels too pessimistic, run the comparison twice — once with equity counted, once zeroed. If the ranking flips, your decision rests on the least certain number on the page.
When the bigger number is the worse offer
Run enough comparisons and a pattern appears: the offer with the highest net package and the offer with the highest effective hourly rate are often not the same offer. When they diverge, the calculator says so explicitly rather than picking a winner for you.
The common shape: Offer A pays more, expects 45 to 50 hours, five days on site. Offer B pays less, expects 38 hours, largely remote. On net package A wins by several thousand. On effective hourly rate B wins comfortably, because A is buying roughly 500 extra hours a year for that difference — a marginal rate far below what either offer nominally pays. Neither answer is automatically right; if you are optimising for the next promotion or clearing a debt on a deadline, buying those hours can be rational. The point of showing both numbers is to make it a decision rather than an accident.
Comparing an offer against staying where you are
The most useful comparison most people never run is the new offer against their current job, entered on identical terms — real hours, real commute, real bonus payout rather than target. The results are regularly uncomfortable in both directions. A move that felt like a clear 12% raise turns out to be 4% once a longer commute, a lower pension match and five fewer leave days are counted. Or the reverse: a "sideways" move is genuinely 15% better because it removes the commute.
Either way you now have a number instead of a feeling, and a concrete case to take back to your current employer — our pay raise calculator converts that gap into the percentage increase needed to close it. Be honest in the current-role column: people inflate their existing job when anxious about leaving and deflate it once they have decided to go.
What the numbers cannot tell you
Compensation is a floor, not a decision. The things that determine whether you are still happy in two years — the manager, whether you will learn anything, whether the company is stable, whether the work interests you — do not fit in a spreadsheet. Use this to rule out offers that are worse than they look, then decide on the parts that matter more.
One practical warning: a large gap between two offers is worth checking rather than celebrating. Unusually high pay for the level sometimes prices in turnover, difficulty or instability that is not mentioned in the interview.
If you are negotiating
- Negotiate the whole package, not just base. Signing bonuses, extra leave, a later start date and remote days are often easier to grant than base salary, which is usually bound to internal bands.
- Get the full offer in writing before you respond. Bonus targets and equity terms are where the ambiguity lives.
- Ask what the band is for the level. Many employers publish it now, and in a growing number of places they are required to on request.
- Do not invent a competing offer. It is checked more often than people expect, and it ends badly.
Related Free Tools From Arb Digital
Everything here is gross, so the next step is tax: run the winner through the paycheck take-home calculator, or the take-home pay by state calculator if the offers sit in different states. If one role is quoted hourly and the other annually, the hourly to salary calculator puts them in the same units, and the cost of living calculator matters for any relocation — a 20% raise into a 35% dearer city is a pay cut. The 401k calculator projects what the pension gap above is worth by retirement, and everything we publish sits in the free online tools hub.
Frequently asked questions
No, deliberately. Reliable pay data is local, current and role-specific, and any figure we published here would be a guess dressed up as a fact — which is exactly the sort of number that costs someone money in a negotiation. For real market data, use your government's labour statistics, a recent industry survey, or the published bands employers in your area put on their own postings.
No. These are gross figures, because tax depends on where you live, your filing status and your other income. Compare gross here, then run the winning offer through a take-home calculator for your country to see the net.
No. Everything is calculated in your browser and nothing is uploaded or saved. Closing the tab clears it.
Cautiously. Unless there is a liquidity event on the horizon, many people compare offers with private equity valued at zero and treat any eventual payout as a bonus. If you do count it, use the current preferred share price rather than a projection, and remember that it usually vests over four years and can be worth nothing.
It is the net annual package divided by every hour the job costs you, including unpaid commuting time. A contracted rate assumes you work exactly your stated hours and teleport to the office. The effective rate counts the travel and the extra hours, which is why a higher-paying job with a long commute can pay less per hour than a lower-paying one nearby.
Set commute days to zero for the remote role and enter real commuting days, minutes and weekly cost for the on-site one. The tool then removes both the cash cost and the unpaid hours from the remote offer, which usually widens its lead on effective hourly rate more than people expect.
The amount actually paid, not the target. Ask what percentage of target was paid in each of the last two years and use that. A 20% target bonus that has paid out at half for two years running is a 10% bonus, and entering the headline figure overvalues that offer against one with a smaller but guaranteed component.
This tool produces gross planning estimates only. It is not financial, tax, or legal advice — figures exclude tax and vary with your circumstances, so consult a qualified professional before making a decision.
