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CalcMax

Salary Calculator

Range: 0.01 – 1,000,000,000

Result

60,000.00

Annual salary

Monthly pay
5,000.00
Semimonthly pay
2,500.00
Biweekly pay
2,307.69
Weekly pay
1,153.85
Pay periods per year
12

Every job advertises its pay in whichever period suits it — a weekly rate in the trades, a fortnightly one in payroll, a monthly one on a contract, and an annual one on the offer letter — and this calculator converts between all five at once. Enter what one period pays and which period it is, and the panel prints the year it adds up to along with every other way of writing it: 5,000 a month is 60,000 a year, 2,500 twice a month, 2,307.69 every two weeks and 1,153.85 a week. The arithmetic is a single multiplication and a handful of divisions, but it rests on one assumption that is worth looking at rather than skipping, which is how many of those periods a year contains. There are 52 weeks in a year, so a weekly period pays 52 times; twice a month is 24 times; and every two weeks is 26 times rather than the 26.09 that 365 days divided by fourteen would give, because pay calendars are counted in whole periods, not in days. That is the difference between the two periods that look most alike: 2,400 every two weeks and 2,600 twice a month are the same 62,400 a year, and the panel prints the same five numbers for both — only its last row tells you that one of them arrives 26 times and the other 24, and that the two drift across the months differently. The last row is there for exactly that reason, and the table below sets all five periods beside each other with the number each one is counted as.

The five pay periods, and how many of each a year contains

Pay periodPayments a yearWhere the number comes from
Weekly5252 times a year, one for each week. A year is 52 weeks and one day, so this is the period that fits the calendar most nearly and the only one where the yearly total divides back into a round number most of the time. It is the convention in trades and manual work, and a rate quoted per week in a job advert is this row.
Every two weeks2626 times a year — 52 weeks divided by two, not the 26.09 that 365 days divided by fourteen would give. It is the period where the calendar and the payroll visibly disagree: 26 two-week periods come to 364 days, so most years have 26 pays and some have 27, and the two-weekly cycle drifts across the months so that some months contain three pays. The packet is therefore smaller than half a month's pay.
Twice a month2424 times a year: two payments a month, twelve months, usually on fixed dates such as the fifteenth and the last working day. Because 24 divides by 12 exactly, a semimonthly payment is always exactly half the monthly equivalent, and the pay dates never move. This is the period that gets confused with every-two-weeks and is genuinely different from it: 24 payments against 26, fixed dates against a drifting cycle.
Monthly1212 times a year, one for each month. It is the period contracts, tenancy agreements and household budgets are written in, so it is the one most annual figures get translated into. The downside is the length of the wait: with twelve deposits a year there is nothing between one and the next, whereas a weekly or fortnightly calendar puts money in the account two to four times as often.
Annual1Once a year. Choosing this period means the amount you enter is the annual salary itself, so the panel is showing what that year looks like broken into pay packets rather than converting anything — it is the setting to use when the offer is quoted yearly and the budget is monthly. Nothing comes back unchanged at this setting, because the period entered is the figure the whole panel is built from.

This table is the page's one assumption written out. There are no amounts in it, deliberately: because whichever period you enter is the one that comes back unchanged, every conversion depends on the number of periods alone, and a table of money would suggest its figures had something to do with the calculator's defaults when they would not. The axis is the pay period itself — the same five values as the drop-down above the panel, in the same order, from the one that pays most often to the one that pays least. Read the middle column as the whole story of this page: two of the five numbers are what a division would give and two are not, and the two that are not, 26 and 24, are exactly the pair that people confuse. A year is 26.09 fortnights, so a fortnightly payroll rounds the calendar away and pays 26 times, and a twice-a-month one pays 24 because twelve months each get two. Both are correct; they are answers to different questions, and the last column says which.

Formula

Annual salary = pay per period × periods per year

payAmount
What one period pays, gross, in whatever currency the numbers are in. It is the amount on the payslip for that period rather than an average of several of them: a month that contained a bonus inflates the year, and a week that contained unpaid absence deflates it. The page does not care which period this is the amount for — the period field is what tells it — but it does care that the two agree, because a fortnightly amount left in the box while the period says weekly produces a year that is twice what the job pays.
payPeriod
Which period that amount is for: weekly, every two weeks, twice a month, monthly, or a year. It sets the number the amount is multiplied by, and there are only five, so it is also the field that decides everything else on the panel. Twice a month and every two weeks are the pair that gets confused and they are genuinely different: 24 payments against 26, on fixed days of the month against a fortnightly cycle that drifts through the calendar.
payPeriodsPerYear
The number the amount was multiplied by: 52, 26, 24, 12 or 1. It is on the panel because it is the page's only real assumption and the one that is almost never written down. Two of these five are not what a division would give — a year is 26.09 fortnights and 24.33 half-months — and they are whole numbers here because a payroll pays a whole number of times. Which is why two periods that look interchangeable differ by two payments a year.
annualSalary
The pay per period multiplied by the number of periods in the year, and the panel's main figure because it is the only one of the five that is a common ground between them. Whatever you entered, the year is the number that can be compared with another job, a tax band or a mortgage application. It is printed to two decimals, and when the period you entered was monthly, the year that comes back is exactly twelve times what you typed.
monthlyPay
The year divided by twelve. Two decimals, because a year does not divide evenly into twelve in most cases — 62,400 does, 60,008 does not. It is the figure contracts and job adverts quote most often, and it is the row to read when comparing a monthly-paid job against a fortnightly one.
semimonthlyPay
The year divided by twenty-four: two payments a month, usually on fixed dates such as the fifteenth and the last day. Because twenty-four divides by twelve exactly, this row is always exactly half the monthly one. It is the row that makes the difference between twice-a-month and every-two-weeks visible, since 24 divides the year evenly and 26 does not.
biweeklyPay
The year divided by twenty-six: one payment every two weeks. It is not half the monthly figure, because a year holds twenty-six of these rather than twenty-four, so each packet is smaller and there are two more of them. Twenty-six two-week periods come to 364 days, which is why most years have twenty-six pays and some have twenty-seven — the extra day or two of the calendar has to land in one of them.
weeklyPay
The year divided by fifty-two. A year is 52 weeks and a day, so this is the period that fits the calendar most nearly, and the one where the yearly figure divides back into a round number most often. It is also the industry convention for hourly and manual work: a weekly rate quoted in a job advert is this row.

Use it when the same pay is being described in two different periods and you want to see whether they are the same offer — a job advertised at a fortnightly rate against your current monthly one, a contract that quotes a day rate against an annual figure you are trying to hold on to, or a payslip that arrives twenty-six times a year while the budget is written monthly. It is also the page to open when the period itself is the question: 2,400 every two weeks and 2,600 twice a month read alike and are not alike, and this calculator prints the year they share and the row that separates them. What it deliberately does not do is involve hours. How much a week pays and how many hours that week took are two different questions, and the two pages beside this one in the same category answer the second: this page converts between periods, they convert between periods and hours.

Worked examples

  1. The default: 5,000 a month

    1. Periods in the year: 12
    2. Annual salary: 5,000 × 12 = 60,000
    3. Monthly: 60,000 ÷ 12 = 5,000; twice a month: 60,000 ÷ 24 = 2,500
    4. Every two weeks: 60,000 ÷ 26 = 2,307.69; weekly: 60,000 ÷ 52 = 1,153.85

    The monthly row comes back as exactly the 5,000 that went in, because the year was made by multiplying twelve and is divided by twelve again. That is the page's rule rather than a coincidence: whichever period you choose, the row for that period is the number you typed. It is worth seeing how far the other rows sit from it — 2,307.69 is not 2,500, and the reason is in the last row of the panel.

  2. A weekly rate: 1,200 a week

    1. Periods in the year: 52
    2. Annual salary: 1,200 × 52 = 62,400
    3. Weekly: 62,400 ÷ 52 = 1,200 — the amount that went in
    4. Every two weeks: 62,400 ÷ 26 = 2,400; twice a month: 62,400 ÷ 24 = 2,600; monthly: 62,400 ÷ 12 = 5,200

    Every figure here is round, which is what happens when the year is a number with as many factors as 62,400 has. The weekly row returns 1,200 unchanged, and the two-week row is exactly double it — a relationship that holds whenever the period you entered is weekly.

  3. The pair that looks alike: 2,400 every two weeks

    1. Periods in the year: 26
    2. Annual salary: 2,400 × 26 = 62,400
    3. Every two weeks: 62,400 ÷ 26 = 2,400 — the amount that went in
    4. Weekly: 62,400 ÷ 52 = 1,200; twice a month: 62,400 ÷ 24 = 2,600; monthly: 62,400 ÷ 12 = 5,200

    The same 62,400 as the weekly example above, reached from the other end: 1,200 a week and 2,400 a fortnight are the same pay, which is a fact worth having in hand the next time a job advertises one and you are paid the other. Read against the next example, this is also the clearest demonstration of what the last row of the panel is for. Enter 2,600 twice a month instead and every one of the five figures above comes out identical — 62,400, 5,200, 2,600, 2,400, 1,200 — with a single character changed: 26 becomes 24.

  4. Twice a month: 3,000

    1. Periods in the year: 24
    2. Annual salary: 3,000 × 24 = 72,000
    3. Twice a month: 72,000 ÷ 24 = 3,000 — the amount that went in
    4. Monthly: 72,000 ÷ 12 = 6,000; weekly: 72,000 ÷ 52 = 1,384.62; every two weeks: 72,000 ÷ 26 = 2,769.23

    The two rows that do not come out round are the two the year does not divide evenly by — 52 and 26 — and rounding them to the nearest cent is all that can be done about it. Note that the monthly row is exactly twice the semimonthly one, which is the arithmetic signature of a twice-a-month pay calendar: twenty-four payments is twelve months, so each month contains exactly two of them.

  5. Starting from the year: 100,000

    1. Periods in the year: 1
    2. Annual salary: 100,000 × 1 = 100,000
    3. Monthly: 100,000 ÷ 12 = 8,333.33; twice a month: 100,000 ÷ 24 = 4,166.67
    4. Every two weeks: 100,000 ÷ 26 = 3,846.15; weekly: 100,000 ÷ 52 = 1,923.08

    This is the one setting where nothing comes back unchanged, because the period you entered is the year itself and the year is the main figure. It is the setting to use when the offer is already quoted annually and the question is what it looks like per pay packet — which is the direction most people actually need, since the offer letter and the budget live in different periods.

Limitations

Everything here is gross and everything here is nominal. No income tax, social insurance, pension contribution, student loan repayment, union subscription, pension auto-enrolment or wage garnishment is modelled, so the amount that reaches a bank account is smaller than the figure on every row by whatever the deductions are where you live — and how much smaller depends on the period as well as the amount, because withholding tables are written per pay period. Nor does the calculator know anything about the pay beyond its period. Overtime, tips, commission, a bonus, a shift premium, mileage and an annual profit share are all outside the multiplication, and several of them are the reason a weekly-paid job and a monthly-paid one at the same annual figure do not feel the same. Two consequences of counting in whole periods are worth expecting rather than reporting. The first is that a calendar year is 365 days, which is 52 weeks and one day, so a fortnightly pay calendar produces twenty-six pays in most years and twenty-seven in some, and the annual figure here is the twenty-six one; the year a twenty-seventh arrives is a year with one more packet in it, not a raise. The second is that the totals do not reconcile by hand: twenty-six biweekly payments of 2,307.69 comes to 59,999.94 rather than 60,000, and that is the rounding of the per-period figure being paid out, not an error in the year. Finally, changing the period changes nothing about the pay — the same 62,400 is 1,200 a week or 2,400 a fortnight — but it changes what a budget has to survive between deposits, and that is a real difference even though it is not an arithmetic one.

Frequently asked questions

What is 5,000 a month as an annual salary?
Multiply it by twelve: 60,000 a year. Written the other ways the same pay is 2,500 twice a month, 2,307.69 every two weeks and 1,153.85 a week. The fortnightly and weekly figures are not round because the year does not divide evenly by 26 or by 52, not because anything has been lost.
Why is biweekly pay not half of monthly pay?
Because a year contains 26 two-week periods, not 24. Twenty-six payments of 2,307.69 is a year; half of 5,000 is 2,500 and twenty-four of those is only 60,000 if the period is semimonthly. The two schemes are often treated as interchangeable and they are not: a fortnightly calendar drifts across the months — some months contain two pays, some three — while a twice-a-month calendar always pays on the same two dates.
How many pay periods are there in a year?
Weekly is 52, every two weeks is 26, twice a month is 24, monthly is 12 and annual is 1. Two of those are not what dividing 365 days by the period length would give — 365 ÷ 14 is 26.09 — and they are whole numbers because a payroll pays a whole number of times. It is also why some years have 27 fortnightly pays: a year is 52 weeks and a day, and that spare day has to land somewhere.
Does this calculator take hours into account?
No. It converts between pay periods and nothing else, so a weekly rate of 1,200 is 62,400 a year whether the week was forty hours or sixty. Adding hours would force you to answer a question you may not be asking and would silently change the answer if you answered it differently. The two pages beside this one in the same category do exactly that conversion, and they are the ones to use when the hours are the point.
Why do the figures not multiply back to the annual total exactly?
Because each row is rounded to the nearest cent before it is paid. Twenty-six payments of 2,307.69 comes to 59,999.94, six cents short of the 60,000 the year is; fifty-two payments of 1,153.85 comes to 60,000.20, twenty cents over. The year is the exact figure and the per-period amounts are the rounded ones, which is the right way round — but it does mean a payslip reconciliation will never be to the penny.
What is the difference between semimonthly and biweekly?
Semimonthly is twice a month on fixed dates, twenty-four times a year; biweekly is every two weeks, twenty-six times a year. A semimonthly calendar always pays on the same day of the month and a biweekly one drifts through the week and the month, which is why a biweekly employee sees two pays in some months and three in others. For the same annual salary a biweekly packet is smaller — the year is split into more pieces.

References

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