Comparing two job offers is one of the highest-stakes sums a person ever does, and it is usually done by looking at the two salaries. Everything else — the bonus, what the employer puts into a pension and what you are required to put in, what the health cover costs you, how many days of leave you get, the signing amount, the fare, and the hours the journey takes — arrives afterwards, one payslip at a time. This puts all of it in one table before the decision. Paste up to four offers, one per line, and it returns the total annual value of each, the annual cost and the annual HOURS of the commute, the value per working hour and the value per hour once the commute is counted, the leave valued at each offer's own daily rate, and the difference from the offer with the highest base salary — which is often not the offer with the most money in it. It ranks by the measure you pick, prints which measure that was, and shows the other two rankings as well, because they frequently disagree and that disagreement is the whole point. Every figure is pre-tax unless you enter post-tax numbers: no tax rate is built in and no tax system is modelled, because they differ by country, year and household. It counts money and hours. It does not weigh the work, the people, the progression or the security, and it does not tell you which offer to accept.
Worked example
JOB OFFER COMPARISON — 2 offers, a working year of 52.00 weeks and 5.00 days a week
Every figure below is worked out only from the numbers you pasted, and every one of them is pre-tax unless what you entered was already post-tax.
HOW EACH LINE WAS READ
Offer A: base $95,000.00 · bonus $9,500.00 (10.00% of base) · employer contribution $4,750.00 (5.00% of base) · your contribution $3,800.00 (4.00% of base) · benefits cost $1,800.00 · paid time off 25.00 days · signing $10,000.00 spread over 3 year(s) · commute $12.00 a day, 45.00 minutes each way, 5.00 on-site days a week · paid 40.00 hours a week · other $0.00
Offer B: base $104,000.00 · bonus $0.00 (amount entered) · employer contribution $3,120.00 (3.00% of base) · your contribution $5,200.00 (5.00% of base) · benefits cost $3,400.00 · paid time off 15.00 days · signing $0.00 spread over 3 year(s) · commute $0.00 a day, 0.00 minutes each way, 0.00 on-site days a week · paid 45.00 hours a week · other -$600.00
SIDE BY SIDE — per year
Offer A Offer B
Base salary $95,000.00 $104,000.00
Bonus $9,500.00 $0.00
Employer contribution $4,750.00 $3,120.00
Signing, per year (3 yr) $3,333.33 $0.00
Your contribution -$3,800.00 -$5,200.00
Benefits cost to you -$1,800.00 -$3,400.00
Commute cost -$3,120.00 $0.00
Other cost or allowance $0.00 -$600.00
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= TOTAL ANNUAL VALUE $103,863.33 $97,920.00
Difference vs highest base $5,943.33 $0.00
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Paid hours a year 2,080.00 2,340.00
Commute hours a year 390.00 0.00
Hours including commute 2,470.00 2,340.00
Per working hour $49.93 $41.85
Per hour incl. commute $42.05 $41.85
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Paid time off (days) 25.00 15.00
Daily rate $365.38 $400.00
Paid time off, valued $9,134.50 $6,000.00
The difference row is against Offer B, the offer with the highest base salary. A positive figure means more total annual value than that offer, a negative figure means less.
THE COMMUTE
Offer A: 260.00 on-site days × 45.00 minutes each way × 2 = 390.00 hours a year, and $3,120.00 in fares, fuel or tolls.
Offer B: 0.00 on-site days × 0.00 minutes each way × 2 = 0.00 hours a year, and $0.00 in fares, fuel or tolls.
Offer A: $49.93 per working hour, $42.05 per hour once those 390.00 hours are counted — a gap of $7.88 an hour.
Offer B: $41.85 per working hour, $41.85 per hour once those 0.00 hours are counted — a gap of $0.00 an hour.
The commutes on these lines differ by 390.00 hours a year. Hours are hours whether or not they are paid, and those ones appear on no salary line.
PAID TIME OFF
Offer A: 260.00 contracted days a year, so a daily rate of $365.38; 25.00 days of leave = $9,134.50.
Offer B: 260.00 contracted days a year, so a daily rate of $400.00; 15.00 days of leave = $6,000.00.
That value is NOT added to the total: leave is already paid inside the base salary. It is printed so that 20 days and 30 days are not read as the same thing, because they are not.
RANKED BY TOTAL ANNUAL VALUE — the measure you picked
1. Offer A $103,863.33
2. Offer B $97,920.00
Ranked by value per working hour — shown for comparison
1. Offer A $49.93
2. Offer B $41.85
Ranked by value per hour including the commute — shown for comparison
1. Offer A $42.05
2. Offer B $41.85
The three rankings agree on the order.
NOTES
· Total annual value = base + bonus + employer contribution + the signing amount spread over the years you set, less your own required contribution, the benefits you pay for, and the commute cost. Paid time off is valued separately and is deliberately not added in.
· Your own required contribution is subtracted because it leaves your pay packet. It is not money lost — it is yours, in a pension — so if you would rather count it as value kept, set that field to 0 and run it again. The tool does not decide that for you.
· Every derived line is rounded to the whole cent once, half away from zero, at the moment it is worked out, and never rounded again. The total is the sum of exactly the lines printed above it, so the column foots to the cent.
· Every figure is pre-tax unless what you entered was already post-tax. No tax rate is built in, no tax or contribution system is modelled, and tax can change the order these come out in.
· No figure here is a benchmark or a norm of any kind. Every number in the table came from the line you pasted.
WHAT THIS DOES NOT SAY
This is arithmetic on numbers you typed in. It is not advice, and it does not say which offer you should accept, which is the best offer, or which would leave anyone better off. We recommend nothing; the ranking is a sort by the measure you picked, and it is not an instruction to take the top line.
It counts money and hours, and only the money and hours you entered. The work itself, the people you would do it with, what you would learn, where it leads, how secure it is, and whether it fits the rest of a life are all real, and not one of them is in this arithmetic. Nothing here is weighted for them because nothing here can be.
Every figure is pre-tax unless the numbers you entered were already post-tax. No tax rate is built into this page and no tax system, social contribution or relief is modelled — they differ by country, by year and by household, and a figure baked in here would be confidently wrong for nearly everyone. Tax can change these totals and can reorder them.
The starting numbers on this page are an invented example. They are not typical, benchmark or recommended terms, and this tool makes no claim about what a bonus, a contribution rate or a leave allowance normally is.
Frequently asked
What format do the lines take?
label | base | bonus | employer contribution | your contribution | benefits cost | paid time off days | signing amount | commute cost a day | commute minutes each way | on-site days a week | paid hours a week | other annual cost or allowance. Separate the fields with a pipe, semicolon or tab; a comma works only on a line with no other separator, otherwise "$100,000" would split in two. Every field after the base is optional. Bonus and the contributions may be written as an amount (4500) or as a percentage of base (6%).
Why doesn't it apply tax?
Because there is no tax rate this page could know. Income tax, social contributions, pension relief, local taxes and student-loan deductions differ by country, by year, by household and by the other income already in it — and pre-tax pension money is taxed differently again. A rate baked in here would be wrong for nearly everybody. Enter post-tax figures if you have them from a payslip or an offer letter, and the comparison becomes post-tax; the arithmetic is the same either way.
Why are the commuting hours printed on their own?
Because they are the cost people notice last and feel most. Five on-site days a week at 45 minutes each way is 375 hours a year — more than nine working weeks — and it does not appear anywhere on a salary line. An offer that pays more and takes 250 extra hours a year is a trade, and it deserves to be seen as one.
Why is paid time off shown but not added to the total?
Because it is already paid inside the base salary; adding it again would count the same money twice. It is valued at each offer's own daily rate and printed as its own line because 20 days and 30 days are genuinely different offers, and comparing them as if they were equal is simply wrong.
Why subtract my own pension contribution?
Because it leaves your pay packet, which is what the per-hour figures are about. It is not money lost — it is yours, in a pension, and often matched. If you would rather count it as value kept, set that field to 0 and run it again. The tool does not make that call for you.
Why does the ranking change depending on the measure?
Because they are three different questions. Total annual value asks how much money. Value per working hour asks how much per hour you are contracted to work. Value per hour including the commute asks how much per hour the job actually takes. A higher salary at 45 hours a week with an hour's travel each way can lose all three ways round, and the three rankings are printed together so you can see whether they disagree.
Which offer should I take?
This tool does not say, and it will not. It ranks by the measure you picked and stops. It counts money and hours only — the work itself, the people, what you would learn, where it leads, how secure it is and how it fits your life are all real and none of them are in the arithmetic.
Are the starting numbers on this page realistic?
No. They are invented so the page can show a working calculation. They are not typical, benchmark or recommended figures, and this tool makes no claim about what a bonus, a contribution rate or a leave allowance normally is.