Hourly to Salary Calculator

What an hourly-to-salary calculator actually computes

An hourly rate and a salary are the same pay measured on different clocks, and the bridge between them is the number of hours you are paid for in a year. The formula is annual = hourly × hours per week × paid weeks per year. At €20 an hour, 40 hours a week, 52 weeks, that is €41,600, and the same identity run backwards turns €41,600 into €20.

The one number people get wrong is the last one. Fifty-two weeks assumes your holiday is paid, which for an employee it generally is: you are paid for 52 weeks and work fewer of them. A contractor who only bills the weeks worked should put in the weeks they expect to bill, 46 or 48, not 52, because unpaid time off comes straight off the top.

How to use it, step by step

• Hourly rate what you are paid for one hour, before tax. Leave it empty if this is what you want to find out.
• Annual salary the yearly gross. Leave it empty to convert an hourly rate upwards instead.
• Hours a week contracted hours, not hours worked. If you are paid for 38 and do 42, the rate per contracted hour is the one on your contract.
• Paid weeks a year 52 if your holiday is paid. Lower it to the weeks you will actually invoice if it is not.
• Read the breakdown below the headline figure sit the monthly, weekly and daily equivalents and the total hours a year, which is the number that makes two offers on different schedules comparable.

The cases that trip the arithmetic up

A part-time rate is where the naive conversion fails hardest. Twenty-five hours a week at €18 is €23,400 a year, and comparing that to a full-time €30,000 tells you almost nothing: per hour, the part-time job pays €18 and the full-time one €14.42. Convert to the hourly rate before you judge, always.

Variable hours need a different input. If your week swings between 20 and 45 hours, no single figure is honest: take your hours over the last three months, divide by thirteen, and use that average. The result is then an average salary too, which is the most anyone can say about variable work.

And a shift premium is not part of the base rate. Night and weekend uplifts, on-call payments and overtime are paid on top of the contracted hours; folding them into the rate inflates the annual figure and makes a job look better than the contract promises. Run the base rate here, and treat the premiums as a separate line.

When the result looks wrong

• “Fill in one of the two fields” both the hourly rate and the salary are empty. One of them is the answer, so the other has to be the question.
• “Clear one field” both are filled. With a rate and a salary already given there is nothing left to derive: empty the one you want computed.
• Values have to be greater than zero a zero or negative hours-a-week makes the division undefined. The tool refuses rather than returning Infinity.
• The monthly figure is lower than you expected you were probably multiplying the week by four. The month is the annual divided by twelve, which is the larger and correct number.
• The salary is higher than your payslip this is gross. Tax and social security come off afterwards; put the annual figure into the gross-to-net calculator to see what lands.

Gross, net, and the cost to an employer

Three different numbers get called “what the job pays”, and mixing them up is how people end up disappointed by an offer they accepted.

• Gross pay what the contract says, before anything is withheld. This is what an hourly-to-salary conversion gives you, and what job ads quote.
• Net pay what reaches your account, after social security and income tax. Always lower, and progressively lower as the salary rises.
• Total cost of employment gross plus the employer’s own contributions, typically 25–35% more in Europe. It is the number a company compares against a contractor’s invoice, which is why a contractor rate that looks generous next to a salary often is not.
• Day rate the hourly rate times a standard day. Useful for contract work, and the unit most freelance budgets are written in.