Job Offer Comparison Calculator
Two offers, side by side
Your result will appear here
Fill in the fields on the left and this updates as you type.
Know what this estimate is based on
- Jurisdiction
- General mathematical model
- Scope and limitations
- Planning indicator only. It does not assess every part of a household's finances or replace individualized professional advice.
- Source links checked
- Jul 30, 2026
Built and regression-tested by Smart Tools Lab. It has not been individually reviewed by a licensed financial, tax, or legal professional.
How to use
- 01
Enter Offer A's six visible lines in order: base salary, target bonus as a percentage of base, equity a year at today's price, the 401(k) match as a percentage of base, the health premium you pay each month, and paid days off a year with holidays included.
- 02
Enter the same six for Offer B. Everything except the two base salaries is optional, so you can compare two bare salaries first and add the rest as you learn it.
- 03
Enter your combined effective rate on cash pay — federal, state and payroll tax blended together, not your top bracket. It opens at 0, so until you set it the page treats both offers as untaxed.
- 04
Enter how much more expensive Offer B's city is than Offer A's, negative if it is cheaper. That one number divides Offer B's whole total, so it is worth checking properly rather than guessing.
- 05
Open Advanced options for the lines only some offers carry: each plan's deductible, employer HSA or FSA money, the annual commute cost, the share of the deductible you actually expect to spend (prefilled at 50%) and the working days in a year (260). Then read the verdict, the per-working-day pair and the line-by-line table.
Formula
For each offer: bonus = base × the bonus percentage. Match = base × the match percentage. Annual premium = the monthly premium × 12. Expected out of pocket = the deductible × the share you expect to spend. Taxable cash = base + bonus + equity − the annual premium, because a section 125 premium comes out before tax. After-tax cash = taxable cash × (1 − your effective rate). Total = after-tax cash + the 401(k) match + employer HSA or FSA money − expected out of pocket − the annual commute cost. Working days = the days in a year (260) − the paid days off. Value per working day = the total ÷ those days; paid leave is never added to the total, because the salary already pays for it. Offer B is then divided by (1 + the cost-of-living difference ÷ 100) to put it in Offer A's dollars, and the verdict is that adjusted figure minus Offer A's total.
Example
Offer A: $130,000 base, a 10% bonus target, $15,000 of equity, a 4% match, $210 a month of premium, 25 paid days, a $2,000 deductible and no commute. Offer B: $145,000 base, a 5% bonus, no equity, a 3% match, $380 a month of premium, 18 paid days, a $4,500 deductible, $750 of employer HSA money and a $2,400 commute. A 28% effective rate, no cost-of-living difference, the deductible weighted at the prefilled 50% and a 260-day year. Offer A: $130,000 + $13,000 + $15,000 − $2,520 of premium = $155,480 of taxable cash, which at 28% leaves $111,946; add $5,200 of match, subtract $1,000 of expected out of pocket, and the total is $116,146. Offer B: $145,000 + $7,250 + $0 − $4,560 = $147,690 of taxable cash, $106,337 after tax; add $4,350 of match and $750 of employer HSA, subtract $2,250 of expected out of pocket and $2,400 of commute, and the total is $106,787. So Offer A wins by $9,359 despite being $15,000 behind on base — the benefits, the health costs and the commute swing $24,359 between them. Per working day the verdict is the same: $494 across 235 working days at A against $441 across 242 at B, and the 7-day difference in paid leave is worth about $3,460 a year at the higher of the two daily rates. Enter a 15% cost-of-living premium for Offer B's city and its $106,787 becomes $92,858 in Offer A's dollars, widening the gap to $23,288.
Definitions
- Total compensation
- Everything of value the job pays: base, bonus, equity, employer retirement contributions and employer-paid benefits. It is not the same as salary and it is not the same as what lands in your account.
- Effective tax rate
- Total tax paid divided by gross pay — federal, state and payroll blended. Distinct from your marginal bracket, which is the rate on the next dollar and is always higher.
- Section 125 plan
- The cafeteria-plan arrangement under which health premiums are deducted from pay before federal income tax and FICA. It is why a premium reduces taxable cash rather than after-tax cash.
- Deductible share
- The proportion of a plan's deductible you expect to actually spend in a year. Subtracting a deductible in full assumes a bad medical year and subtracting none assumes a perfect one, so the page weights it and lets you set the weight.
- Value per working day
- The offer's total divided by the days you actually work after paid leave. The one measure in which paid time off shows up without double-counting the salary that pays for it.
- Match true-up
- An employer top-up that restores match you missed by hitting the deferral limit early in the year. Plans without one silently stop matching once your contributions stop.
Good to know
What a comparison has to contain before it means anything
Two base salaries are not a comparison. They are the largest line in a comparison, and on the worked example they point the wrong way: Offer B leads by $15,000 on base and loses by $9,359 once everything is priced. Getting from one to the other takes six lines per offer and four shared ones. The three cash lines are base, the target bonus as a percentage of base, and equity valued at today's price — added together and taxed at one blended rate, because a comparison does not need a bracket structure and a per-paycheque figure does. Two lines are employer money that never passes through your tax return: the 401(k) match, worth $5,200 at A and $4,350 at B, and any HSA or FSA seed, which is $750 at B and nothing at A. Two are costs: the health premium, which comes out of gross pay before tax under a section 125 plan and therefore reduces taxable cash rather than after-tax cash, and the commute, which is straightforwardly after-tax money out of the door. One is a probability rather than a certainty — the deductible — which the page weights by a share you control instead of subtracting in full or ignoring. And one, paid days off, is deliberately never added to the total at all. Finally the whole of Offer B is divided by the cost-of-living difference between the two cities, because a dollar in a dearer city buys less of the thing you actually want. That one number is doing more work than any other on the page: a 15% difference moves Offer B's $106,787 to $92,858 and turns a close comparison into a rout. It is also the number most worth researching properly rather than estimating, since housing is usually the whole of the difference and state income tax, which this page does not model separately, can add several points on top of that.
Paid time off is not extra money
Almost every total-compensation spreadsheet on the internet values paid days off at your daily rate and adds them to the total. That is a double count, and it is worth being precise about why. Your salary is consideration for a year of employment that already includes those days; the employer is not paying you extra for them, they are paying you the same amount for fewer days of work. Add 25 days at a $500 daily rate and you have counted $12,500 of the salary twice. What paid leave genuinely changes is not the size of the pay but the price of your time — the same money spread over fewer working days. So this page reports two measures rather than one. The annual total says which offer produces more money over a year. Value per working day divides that total by the days you actually work: $494 across 235 days at Offer A against $441 across 242 at Offer B. That second measure is where paid leave finally appears, honestly and without inflating anything. Usually the two agree, as they do on the defaults, and the comparison is simple. The case worth stopping on is when they disagree — when one offer pays more over the year while the other pays more per working day, because it hands back more paid days. The page calls that out explicitly when it happens. There is no arithmetically correct answer to which measure wins; they answer different questions. Annual total is right if you are optimising for money, because money is what accumulates. Value per working day is right if you are optimising for the price of your time, which is the more honest framing for anyone comparing a demanding role against a humane one. A seven-day difference in paid leave, on the worked example, is worth about $3,460 a year at the higher of the two daily rates — real, but rarely decisive on its own.
The health line pulls in two directions at once
Health benefits are where offer comparisons most often go wrong, because the two numbers involved behave completely differently and people treat them the same way. The premium is certain, recurring and pre-tax. Under a section 125 cafeteria plan it is deducted from gross pay before federal income tax and before Social Security and Medicare, so its real cost is meaningfully less than the sticker. That is why this page subtracts the premium from taxable cash rather than from after-tax pay: a $2,040 annual premium difference between the two offers, at a 28% effective rate, costs about $1,469 of real money rather than $2,040. Anyone comparing sticker premiums is overstating the gap by roughly their own tax rate. The deductible is the opposite animal. It is after-tax money, it is a ceiling rather than a bill, and how much of it you spend is a fact about next year that nobody knows. Subtracting it in full assumes a bad medical year; ignoring it assumes a perfect one; both are wrong most of the time. So the page weights it by a share you set, prefilled at 50%. Set that to 100% if you have a chronic condition, a planned procedure or a family, and to 0% if you are young, single and healthy and would genuinely rather carry the risk. On the defaults it turns a $2,500 deductible difference into a $1,250 difference in the answer. The third piece is employer HSA or FSA money, which is unambiguously good — it is a contribution you did not make, into an account with a tax advantage, and Offer B's $750 offsets a meaningful part of its worse premium and deductible. Where the plan choice itself is the question rather than the offer around it, the high-deductible-versus-PPO page prices the plan properly, including the premium savings that fund the HSA in the first place.
What this page deliberately refuses to do
A calculator is only trustworthy if its boundaries are written down, so here are this one's. It compares two W-2 salaries and it models no self-employment tax, no qualified business income deduction and no gap in benefits from being a contractor. If either offer is a 1099 contract this is the wrong page: a contractor carries the full 15.3% self-employment tax against an employee's 7.65%, buys their own coverage, receives no match and no paid days, and can claim a 20% deduction a salary can never touch. That comparison is a different mechanism entirely and the 1099-vs-W-2 page owns it. Second, one blended effective rate stands in for the whole of federal, state and payroll tax on both sides. That is exactly right for a comparison, where the same simplification applies to both offers and largely cancels, and exactly wrong for a paycheque — take the winner to the take-home page for a real per-period figure. It also means a move between a high-tax and a no-income-tax state is being carried by the cost-of-living field rather than modelled properly, which understates it. Third, two of the lines here are softer than they look. The 401(k) match is conditional: it is what you receive if you defer enough to capture the whole formula, and front-loading contributions to hit the annual limit early stops the match for the rest of the year at any employer without a true-up. And equity is priced at today's value while being neither cash nor certain — it vests on a schedule, it is forfeited if you leave first, it moves with the share price, at a private company it may not be sellable at all, and when it vests it is ordinary wage income withheld at the flat supplemental rate, which usually leaves a high earner short at filing. Decide separately whether you would accept that share of your pay as a claim on a share price.
Frequently asked questions
Which offer actually pays more?
The page resolves each to one after-tax annual figure and then puts Offer B into Offer A's cost of living so the two are comparable. On the worked example Offer B's base is $15,000 higher and Offer B still loses by $9,359, because the bonus target is half as rich, there is no equity, the premium is $170 a month more, the deductible is more than twice as high and there is a $2,400 commute. The headline salary moved the answer by $15,000 and everything else moved it back by $5,641 further than that. That is the ordinary shape of these comparisons, not an unusual one.
Why is paid time off not added to my total compensation?
Because your salary already pays for it. Valuing 25 paid days at your daily rate and adding them to total comp counts the same money twice — the days are paid out of the base, not on top of it. What paid leave actually changes is the price of your time: the same money over fewer working days. So the page reports total value AND value per working day, $494 across 235 days at Offer A against $441 across 242 at Offer B. When the two measures disagree the page says so explicitly, because that is exactly the case worth thinking about.
What effective tax rate should I put in?
The blended rate you actually pay across everything, not your top bracket. Take last year's total federal tax plus state tax plus Social Security and Medicare, divide by gross pay, and use that. It is typically well below the bracket people quote — a 24% bracket often blends to something in the high twenties once payroll tax is added and the lower brackets are averaged in. One rate stands in for both offers here, which is fine for a comparison and wrong for a paycheque; take the winner to the take-home page for a real per-period figure.
Why does the health premium come off before tax rather than after?
Because premiums paid through a section 125 cafeteria plan are deducted from gross pay before federal income tax and before FICA. So a premium reduces taxable cash rather than after-tax cash, and its real cost is less than the sticker. A $2,040 annual premium difference at a 28% effective rate is worth about $1,469 of real money, not $2,040. The deductible is the opposite kind of number — real money, but a ceiling rather than a bill — which is why it is weighted by a share you set, prefilled at 50%. Set it to 100% if you expect a heavy medical year and 0% if you expect none.
How should I treat the equity number?
As the most uncertain line on the page. It is priced here at today's value and it is not cash: it vests on a schedule, it is forfeited if you leave first, its value moves with the share price, and at a private company it may not be sellable at all. It is also ordinary wage income when it vests, withheld at the flat supplemental rate, which usually leaves a high earner short at filing. The $15,000 of equity in the worked example is the difference between the two offers by itself — so decide separately whether you would accept that much of your pay as a claim on a share price.
Is the 401(k) match guaranteed money?
No, it is the one line here that is conditional. The $5,200 and $4,350 in the example are what you receive if you defer enough to capture the whole formula; defer less and you simply do not get it. Two further traps: front-loading contributions to hit the annual limit in October stops the match for the rest of the year at any employer without a true-up, and a vesting schedule can mean you leave without the employer money you were counting on. Treat the match as conditional dollars rather than as pay.
What if one of the two offers is a 1099 contract?
Then this is the wrong page. This comparison is W-2 against W-2 and deliberately models no self-employment tax, no qualified business income deduction and no benefits gap. A contractor carries the full 15.3% self-employment tax against an employee's 7.65%, buys their own coverage, gets no match and no paid days off, and can claim a deduction a salary never can. All of that lives on the 1099-vs-W-2 page, which solves for the rate a contract has to pay to match a salary.