← Real Hourly Wage Calculator

Which job offer actually pays more per hour?

A bigger salary doesn't always mean a better deal. Enter both offers below — commute, overtime, decompression time, and job costs included — and see which one really pays more per hour of your life.

Offer A

How draining is this job day to day?

40 hrs
30 min
30 min
0 hrs
5 days

Offer B

How draining is this job day to day?

40 hrs
60 min
45 min
0 hrs
5 days

The verdict

Offer B pays more per hour

About $0.79/hr more in real terms — a 4% difference.

Offer A

$20.51

Not $23.08/hr like the salary suggests

195.0real hrs / mo
$4,000real take-home

Offer B

$21.30

Not $25.96/hr like the salary suggests

211.3real hrs / mo
$4,500real take-home

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How this comparison is calculated

Each offer's real hourly wage is calculated independently using the same formula, then compared directly against the other.

realHoursPerMonth = (hours + overtime + commuteMin/60*days + decompMin/60*days) * (52/12) realTakeHome = max(0, salary - commuteCost - otherWorkCost) realWage = realTakeHome / realHoursPerMonth difference = |realWageA - realWageB| percentDifference = round(difference / min(realWageA, realWageB) * 100)

Worked example

Someone is offered a 12.5% raise: their current job pays $4,000/month with a 40-minute commute, 30 minutes of decompression, and $250/month in job costs, for a real hourly wage of about $18.88. The new offer pays $4,500/month but has a 90-minute commute, 60 minutes of decompression, and $400/month in costs, working out to a real hourly wage of about $18.02. Despite the 12.5% raise, the new offer actually pays less per real hour — a gap the salary numbers alone don't show.

This tool uses the same real hourly wage formula as WageReality's main calculator, based on the concept from Your Money or Your Life by Vicki Robin and Joe Dominguez.

Frequently asked questions

Compare their real hourly wage, not their salary, since salary alone hides differences in commute time, unpaid overtime, decompression time, and job-related costs. Two offers with the same salary can pay very differently per real hour once those factors are counted. Enter both offers' pay, hours, commute, and costs into this tool to see which one actually pays more per hour of your life. The offer with the higher real hourly wage is the better deal in time-adjusted terms.

No, a higher salary does not always mean a better real hourly wage. A raise can be fully or partly cancelled out by a longer commute, more unpaid overtime, or higher job-related costs at the new role. It's possible for a 10-15% raise to result in a lower real hourly wage than a lower-paying offer with an easier schedule. Always run the numbers rather than comparing salary figures alone.

Not directly in the monthly take-home field, since a one-time signing bonus or long-vesting equity isn't a reliable monthly amount. This tool is built around recurring monthly take-home pay, so it compares the ongoing real hourly wage of each offer. Treat a signing bonus as a separate, one-time factor to weigh alongside the real hourly wage result, not something to average into it.

This tool does not automatically adjust for cost of living differences between cities. It compares real hourly wage — pay per hour of time actually spent on the job — which is a separate question from how far that pay stretches locally. If cost of living matters to your decision, adjust the take-home pay figures yourself before comparing, or weigh the real hourly wage result alongside a separate cost-of-living comparison.

Yes, benefits are worth factoring in, but indirectly, since they don't fit neatly into an hourly wage formula. A cheaper health plan or extra paid time off effectively raises your real take-home pay, so you can approximate this by increasing the take-home pay field or lowering the job-cost field for the offer with better benefits. Then let the real hourly wage comparison reflect that adjustment.

Use your best realistic estimate for anything you don't know yet, such as commute time or expected overtime, based on the role description or what you'd ask in a follow-up conversation with the employer. The result is only as accurate as the numbers you put in, so revisit the comparison once you have firmer details, such as after an offer call or a conversation with a future teammate about typical hours.

This tool compares two offers at a time by design, to keep the comparison simple and readable. If you have more than two offers, run this comparison for each pair, or use the single-offer calculator on WageReality's homepage to get each offer's real hourly wage individually and then rank them yourself.