Stack two job offers line by line — total comp, benefits, PTO, and effective hourly — to see which one actually wins.
Base salary is the worst way to compare offers. This calculator stacks both offers across the metrics that matter — total comp including bonus and 401(k) match, net after health and commute costs, effective hourly with PTO subtracted, and a value score that prices PTO as real dollars — so you negotiate from data, not gut feel.
Direct answers to the most common questions, in plain language. Skim if you're in a hurry; dig deeper below.
Total comp — not base salary — and net after benefits is the honest number.
Base salary is just the headline. The honest comparison adds bonus, 401k match, equity, and any other employer contributions, then subtracts your real out-of-pocket costs — health premiums, commute, parking, dependent care. Two offers with the same base can differ by $15,000+ once you do the full math.
Yes — every PTO day is paid time you keep, valued at your daily rate.
If your effective daily rate is $500 and Offer A gives you 10 more PTO days than Offer B, that is $5,000 of additional value per year — every year. PTO compounds across decades the same way bonus does. This calculator builds PTO into a "value score" so it stops being invisible.
Yes — it is free, immediate, and pre-tax compounding.
A 6% match on a $120,000 salary is $7,200/year. Over 30 years at 7% real return, that single year of match alone becomes about $55,000. The match is real comp, fully vested in most modern plans, and should be added to total comp before you decide which offer wins.
Set a fair monthly dollar value for the ones you would actually use.
Equity grants, RSUs, sign-on bonuses, remote-work allowances, mental-health stipends, professional-development budgets, and parental leave all matter — but only if you would use them. Convert each to a fair annual dollar figure (assume 50% haircut on equity for risk) and add to total comp.
The mechanics in short answers — no jargon, no upsell.
Bonus is entered as a percent of base (most common) or a flat dollar amount. Employer 401k match assumes you contribute enough to capture the full match — almost always the right move. These three stack into your headline total compensation.
Health insurance premiums (your share, monthly) and commute costs (gas, transit, parking) get annualized and subtracted from total comp. This is the number that funds your real life — rent, groceries, savings.
Standard working year is 2,080 hours (52 weeks × 40 hrs). PTO days subtract from that base (PTO × 8 hours), so a 25-PTO-day offer has 1,880 working hours. Net comp ÷ working hours is your real hourly — the apples-to-apples productivity number.
PTO days × daily rate gives a dollar value to time off. The value score is total comp plus that PTO value — useful when comparing a higher-cash offer against a higher-PTO offer. The two are often surprisingly close.
Designed so anyone can model their situation in under a minute, with or without a finance background.
See both offers as a single total-comp number — base + bonus + match + benefits — so the headline salary stops being misleading.
Health premiums and commute costs come straight off the top. The calculator shows what actually lands in your account, not what HR puts in the offer letter.
Every PTO day is converted to dollars at your daily rate, then added to a value score so a generous-PTO offer can beat a higher-base one.
Compare your true hourly rate after subtracting PTO from working days. Surprisingly often, the offer with more PTO has the better hourly.
Stop spreadsheet-staring. The calculator picks a winner on each metric and shows the percentage difference so you can negotiate from data.
Walk into the call with the gap quantified. "Offer B is $9,200 better on net comp" beats "I think the other one pays more" every time.
Everything you might ask before, during, or after using this tool.
Base salary is one component of pay, but bonus, employer 401k match, equity grants, and benefits often add 15–35% on top. Two offers with identical $130,000 bases can deliver wildly different total comp once you include a 15% bonus, 6% 401k match, and $400/month in health premium differences. Always negotiate and compare on total comp, not base.
Yes, if you intend to contribute enough to capture it. Employer match is real, fully-vested-in-most-plans compensation that compounds tax-advantaged for decades. The only reason to exclude it is if you genuinely cannot afford to contribute enough to earn the match — but for most full-time roles you should plan to capture 100% of the match and treat it as comp.
For public-company RSUs, take the four-year grant value and divide by four for an annual figure, then apply a discount for risk (10–25% if the stock is volatile or you might leave early). For private-company equity, the honest answer is to value it at zero for decision-making and treat any payout as upside. The base + bonus + benefits comparison is what should drive your choice.
Yes, indirectly — the commute cost field captures the dollar difference. A fully remote role with $0/mo commute often beats a hybrid role with $250/mo commute by $3,000/year, before you account for the time savings. If one offer is remote and the other in-office, set commute on the remote offer to $0 and the comparison will reflect the gap.
Cash and time off are not directly comparable, but you can convert PTO to dollars at your daily rate. A 20-day-PTO offer at a $100,000 salary represents about $7,700 of paid time off. If the other offer has 10 days at $108,000, the higher-base offer is only $300 ahead on a value-adjusted basis — and most people would happily take the extra two weeks.
Signing and relocation are one-time. Amortize them over your expected tenure — usually 2–4 years. A $20,000 sign-on over a 3-year expected tenure is roughly $6,700/year of effective comp. Add that to your total comp for the comparison, and be aware most signing bonuses include a clawback if you leave early.
Adjust mentally for cost of living before deciding — the calculator handles compensation, not COL. A $130,000 offer in Austin generally beats $145,000 in San Francisco on a take-home-and-rent-adjusted basis. Use a separate COL calculator to convert salaries to equivalent purchasing power, then run them through this tool.
This calculator compares year-one comp. For multi-year decisions, project realistic raise rates (3–8%/year) and promotion timelines for each company. A startup with lower base but faster promotion can outearn a stable mid-cap over 5 years. Use the year-one comparison as a baseline, then make a separate spreadsheet for the trajectory question.
Other Lazysmirk tools that pair well with this one.
Calculate your real take-home pay after federal, state, and FICA taxes. Includes 401(k), HSA, health insurance, and other pre-tax deductions.
Convert any salary to hourly, daily, weekly, biweekly, or monthly pay. Model raises, compare inflation-adjusted pay, and see the real per-hour rate when you work overtime.
Convert any hourly wage to annual, monthly, biweekly, and weekly salary. Includes overtime, unpaid leave, and a side-by-side offer comparison.
Set the freelance or contractor rate you can defend. Target take-home, billable utilization, overhead, and self-employment tax — all in one number.
Compute weekly overtime under FLSA or California rules, including daily OT, double-time, and after-tax take-home.
Recruiters quote base salary because it is the simplest number. Candidates remember base salary because it is the easiest to brag about. But base salary is, at best, 65–80% of your actual annual compensation — and the missing pieces are not evenly distributed.
A typical white-collar offer in 2026 includes base, a target bonus of 10–20%, a 4–6% 401k match, employer-paid health insurance (with employee contributions of $50–500/month), and some flavor of equity or RSU grant. Add it up and the gap between offers on a total-comp basis can be 25%+ even when the bases look identical.
The discipline this calculator enforces is simple: write down every dollar that hits your account (or compounds in a tax-advantaged account), subtract every dollar you pay for benefits, and compare those numbers. The headline base salary stops mattering once you do the math.
Most people treat PTO as a "perk." It is not. PTO is paid days off. Every day of PTO you take is a day you are paid at your daily rate without working. That is the textbook definition of salary, just delivered as time rather than cash.
Quantifying it: at $130,000/year, your daily rate is roughly $500 (assuming 260 working days). Ten extra PTO days is $5,000/year. Over a 30-year career at 4% real wage growth, the cumulative value of those extra ten days exceeds $250,000. That is a downpayment on a house — denominated in unrushed Tuesday mornings.
This is why the value score in the calculator adds PTO-as-dollars back to total comp. A $128,000 offer with 25 PTO days frequently beats a $135,000 offer with 12 PTO days on a value-adjusted basis. The cash-rich offer looks better in the offer letter; the PTO-rich offer is usually better for your life.
Two offers with identical $130,000 bases and identical bonuses can leave you with $7,000 of annual take-home difference based on benefits alone. Health insurance is the biggest lever — a "good" plan might cost you $80/month employee-only; a mediocre plan can run $450/month. That is $4,440 per year, every year, on a single line item.
Commute is the second silent killer. If one role is fully remote and the other requires three days in an office that takes a $14 daily round trip, that is roughly $2,200 per year — before parking, before the time cost. A "small" commute is a recurring 5-figure expense over a decade.
The calculator handles both directly: enter your share of the monthly health premium and your real monthly commute, and they get subtracted from total comp before the comparison. The "net after benefits" number is the one that actually lands in your bank account.
When two offers are close on net comp but different on PTO, the cleanest way to break the tie is effective hourly rate. Compute it: net comp divided by actual working hours, where working hours = 2,080 minus PTO hours.
Example: Offer A pays $135,000 net comp with 12 PTO days. Working hours = 2,080 - 96 = 1,984. Effective hourly = $68.04. Offer B pays $128,000 net comp with 25 PTO days. Working hours = 2,080 - 200 = 1,880. Effective hourly = $68.09. Offer B has a higher hourly rate despite the $7,000 lower headline.
Effective hourly is also the right metric for comparing salaried roles to contracting or freelance work. A $150/hour contract is roughly equivalent to a $250,000 salaried role with average PTO — and most candidates underestimate this gap by half.
If both offers land within 5% on net comp, stop optimizing the spreadsheet. The decision is now about growth potential, manager quality, team culture, commute or remote setup, and the kind of work you would do day-to-day. None of these show up in the calculator, but all of them dominate the comp gap over a 3–5 year horizon.
A typical raise trajectory at a fast-growth company can be 8–15% per year for the first few years; at a stable mid-cap it is 3–5%. Compound that for four years and the "smaller" offer at the higher-growth company is often the better long-term move — even if year-one comp is lower.
The right way to use this calculator: get to a tight number first so you stop guessing about money, then make the call based on the things money cannot capture. The comp comparison is the floor of the decision, not the ceiling.
Two short notes worth reading before you trust any number on this page.
Your loan amount, rate, and prepayment inputs never leave your device. No accounts, no cookies on your numbers, no analytics on the values you type. Disconnect from the internet and it still works.
We are not a bank, NBFC, advisor, broker, or distributor of any financial product. The numbers shown here are estimates for educational purposes only, based on the inputs you provide.
Results are not financial, legal, or tax advice. Please consult a qualified professional before any decision about your loan, investments, or personal finances. Actual loan terms and charges depend on your bank and individual circumstances.
