The Pay Raise Calculator estimates your new gross hourly, weekly, monthly, and annual pay after a fixed-dollar or percentage increase. Use it to compare a proposed raise, prepare for a salary discussion, or estimate how higher pay could affect your budget.
The results are before taxes and deductions. Check the conversion assumptions below, especially if you work fewer than 40 hours per week or enter your current pay as a monthly amount.
How to use the pay raise calculator
- Enter your current Rate. Use your regular gross pay before taxes, insurance, retirement contributions, and other deductions.
- Select the pay period under “per.” Choose hour, day, work-week, or month. The calculator converts your entry to an hourly rate using fixed divisors: 1 hour, 8 hours per day, 40 hours per work-week, or 176 hours per month.
- Enter your Work week in hours. This affects most fixed-amount calculations. However, percentage raises use a fixed 40-hour week for weekly, monthly, and annual results, regardless of this entry.
- Choose “Rise by.” Select a fixed amount per hour, week, month, or year, or select Percentage. There is no fixed daily-raise option.
- Enter the increase. For example, enter 2 for an additional $2 per hour, or 10 for a 10% raise. Read the resulting new hourly, weekly, monthly, and annual wages.
There is no annual option for entering your current salary. If you only know your annual pay, first convert it to an hourly equivalent using your paid hours per year. For example, $41,600 ÷ (52 × 40) = $20 per hour.
Use your actual hourly rate when available. The fixed conversions for daily, weekly, and monthly inputs may not match your employer’s schedule. Selecting “work-week,” for example, always divides your entered rate by 40, even if you enter a different Work week.
How the pay raise formula works
For pay figures measured over the same period, the basic formulas are:
- Fixed increase: New pay = Current pay + Raise amount
- Percentage increase: New pay = Current pay × (1 + Raise percentage ÷ 100)
This calculator first converts your current Rate to an hourly amount. If h is that hourly amount and w is your entered weekly hours, its five modes work as follows. In each row, A means the fixed raise amount for the selected period.
| Raise mode | Main calculation | How the other results are calculated |
|---|---|---|
| Fixed amount per hour | New hourly pay = h + A | Weekly = new hourly pay × w; monthly = weekly × 4.26; annual = weekly × 52. |
| Fixed amount per week | New weekly pay = h × w + A | Hourly = weekly ÷ w; monthly = weekly × 4.26; annual = weekly × 52. |
| Fixed amount per month | New monthly pay = h × w × 4.26 + A | Weekly = monthly ÷ 4.26; hourly = monthly ÷ (w × 4.26); annual = monthly × 12. |
| Fixed amount per year | New annual pay = h × w × 52 + A | Weekly = annual ÷ 52; monthly = annual ÷ 12; hourly = annual ÷ (52 × 40). |
| Percentage | New hourly pay = h × (1 + Percentage ÷ 100) | Weekly = hourly × 40; monthly = weekly × 4.26; annual = weekly × 52. |
Example: a 10% raise on $20 per hour
Enter a Rate of $20 per hour, select Percentage, and enter 10. The new hourly rate is:
$20 × (1 + 10 ÷ 100) = $22 per hour
Using the percentage mode’s fixed 40-hour week, the results are:
| Pay period | Before the raise | After the raise | Increase |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hourly | $20.00 | $22.00 | $2.00 |
| Weekly | $800.00 | $880.00 | $80.00 |
| Monthly, using 4.26 weeks | $3,408.00 | $3,748.80 | $340.80 |
| Annual, using 52 weeks | $41,600.00 | $45,760.00 | $4,160.00 |
A fixed raise of $2 per hour produces these same results when Work week is set to 40 hours.
How to calculate your pay raise percentage from an offer
If you know your old and new pay, calculate the percentage increase separately:
Pay raise percentage = (New pay − Old pay) ÷ Old pay × 100
For example, an increase from $50,000 to $53,000 is ($53,000 − $50,000) ÷ $50,000 × 100 = 6%. Compare amounts covering the same period and work schedule. A percentage increase is undefined when the starting pay is zero.
The calculator’s Percentage option takes a percentage as an input; it does not provide separate old-pay and new-pay fields to calculate that percentage for you.
Important conversion limits to check
Monthly and annual results use different time assumptions
Hourly, weekly, and percentage modes estimate monthly pay using 4.26 weeks, but annual pay using 52 weeks. Because 4.26 × 12 = 51.12, the monthly result multiplied by 12 will not equal the annual result.
In the example above, annual pay is $45,760. If you want an average calendar-month budget based on that annual amount, divide by 12: $3,813.33 per month, rather than the displayed $3,748.80 monthly estimate. Monthly-raise mode instead calculates annual pay as monthly pay × 12; annual-raise mode calculates monthly pay as annual pay ÷ 12.
A monthly salary entry may not remain unchanged before the raise
The calculator divides a monthly Rate by 176 to find hourly pay, then uses your weekly hours and 4.26 weeks to calculate the monthly baseline. At 40 hours per week, that baseline represents 170.4 hours, not 176.
For example, entering $3,520 per month produces an hourly equivalent of $20 and a monthly baseline of $3,408. A $500 monthly raise therefore produces $3,908 in this tool—not $4,020. For a contractual monthly salary increase, the direct calculation remains old monthly salary plus the monthly raise.
Non-40-hour schedules need extra care
In Percentage mode, the new hourly rate reflects the percentage increase, but the longer-period results assume 40 hours per week. For a different schedule, multiply the new hourly rate by your actual weekly hours yourself.
In fixed annual-raise mode, the annual, weekly, and monthly results use your entered weekly hours when establishing current pay. However, its hourly result always divides annual pay by 52 × 40. For your own hourly equivalent, divide the annual result by 52 × your actual weekly hours, assuming 52 paid weeks.
Putting your raise estimate to work
- Prepare for negotiations. Compare a proposed percentage with a fixed-dollar increase. At $20 per hour, for example, a $2 hourly raise equals 10%.
- Evaluate a promotion or job offer. Compare hourly equivalents as well as annual salaries. Higher annual pay may come with longer hours, different benefits, or additional commuting costs.
- Plan your budget. Treat the result as gross pay, not additional spending money. Taxes, benefit deductions, and retirement contributions can change the amount reaching your bank account.
- Estimate employer costs. Compare annual base-pay increases across employees, then separately account for employer taxes, benefits, and any overtime effects.
Annual figures are full-year equivalents, not necessarily what you will receive during the current calendar year. A raise starting partway through the year applies only to the remaining eligible pay periods. The calculator also does not model unpaid leave, overtime premiums, bonuses, or tax withholding.
For an HR or recruiting website, Calcopolis lets you build a custom salary increase calculator with schedule-specific assumptions and pay periods, helping employees or candidates understand proposed compensation.
Related pay and staffing calculators
- Gross Pay Calculator: Estimate earnings before deductions, including overtime, when base pay alone does not tell the whole story.
- Overtime Calculator: Explore how extra hours and overtime rates affect compensation separately from a base-pay raise.
- Billable Hours Calculator: Review billable time when assessing the financial impact of compensation changes in client-service roles.
- Billing Rate Calculator: Assess client billing rates alongside increased labor costs. A billing rate is not the same as an employee’s wage.
- Employee Productivity Calculator: Examine output relative to labor inputs as one part of a broader staffing review, rather than treating productivity alone as a measure of fair pay.