Salary to Hourly Calculator

How to use this calculator

1. Enter your annual salary as the gross amount paid each year (before taxes and benefits).
2. Enter how many weeks per year you are effectively working or paid—use 52 for full‑year pay, or fewer if you have unpaid time off or seasonal gaps.
3. Enter the average hours you work each week. Include unpaid overtime if you want a realistic effective hourly rate.
4. Review the hourly rate, weekly pay, and monthly pay outputs.
5. Adjust weeks per year and hours per week to model different schedules and compare scenarios for offers or lifestyle changes.

Inputs explained

Annual salary

Your gross yearly pay before taxes, bonuses, and benefits. Use the base salary shown in your offer letter, contract, or pay stub.

Weeks per year

The number of weeks you are paid for during the year. Use 52 for continuous full‑time work; use fewer weeks if you have unpaid breaks, seasonal work, or extended unpaid leave.

Hours per week

Your average working hours per week. For compressed schedules, frequent overtime, or part‑time roles, adjust this to match your real-world workload.

When to use it

• Comparing salaried offers with hourly or contract opportunities by translating salary into an hourly equivalent.
• Evaluating how many hours you effectively work for a given salary when your schedule regularly exceeds a standard 40‑hour week.
• Budgeting when switching between hourly and salaried work by converting your salary into the hourly frame you’re used to.
• Exploring the trade‑off between lower salary with shorter hours and higher salary with longer hours.
• Checking whether a “high” salary is still attractive once you factor in long hours or unpaid time off.
• Explaining to friends, family, or clients how a headline salary number can translate into very different effective hourly pay depending on the schedule.

Tips & cautions

• Use realistic hours per week, including unpaid overtime, if you want an honest effective hourly rate.
• Reduce weeks per year if you know you will have unpaid time off, seasonal breaks, or contractor gaps—otherwise you’ll overstate your hourly pay.
• When comparing job offers, combine this hourly equivalent with information about benefits, bonuses, job security, and commute time.
• Pair this with the hourly-to-salary calculator to run both directions when evaluating offers or negotiating pay.
• Consider running optimistic, typical, and conservative hour scenarios to see a range of effective hourly rates, especially if your workload is unpredictable.
• Does not include overtime, bonuses, commissions, or benefits—only base salary.
• Assumes a relatively stable schedule across the year; if your workload varies substantially, treat results as averages.
• Does not reflect tax withholding, insurance premiums, or retirement contributions that affect take‑home pay.
• Does not factor in unpaid tasks around work (commute time, required training, or after-hours communication), which can reduce your true effective hourly return on time.

Worked examples

Deep dive

FAQs

Does this include overtime or bonuses?

No. The calculator focuses on base salary only. To include overtime or bonuses, you can add a realistic estimate of that extra pay to your annual salary before running the calculation.

What if my hours vary a lot through the year?

Use an average hours-per-week figure based on your last year of work, or run multiple scenarios—busy season vs slow season—to understand a range of effective hourly rates.

How should I compare this to a contractor rate?

Use the hourly rate here as a baseline, then remember that contractors often cover their own benefits, taxes, and unpaid time between projects, so their hourly rates usually need to be higher to net out similarly.

Does this show my take-home (after-tax) hourly pay?

No. These numbers are before taxes and deductions. To estimate after‑tax hourly pay, plug the weekly or monthly pay into a paycheck or tax estimator and divide the net pay by your hours.

Can I use this if I’m paid twice a month or every two weeks?

Yes. Convert your pay stub amounts into an annual salary first (for example, semimonthly pay × 24 or biweekly pay × 26), then enter that annual figure here along with your hours and weeks.

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