Skip to content
PlainTotal
Work & Income

Job Offer Comparison Calculator

Two offers rarely differ only in salary.

Last updated Free, no sign-upHow it works

Your inputs
Offer A
Offer B
Location

Optional. Picks the published price for your state; otherwise the US average is used.

Why we ask

A ZIP code is matched to its state with published postal prefix ranges and used only to look up that state’s row in a federal price table. We never ask for a street address, nothing is stored, and your inputs appear only in this page’s URL.

Results update as you type. Nothing you enter is sent anywhere or stored.

Offer A is worth more by: $1,204.73, an exact figure.

Offer A is worth more by

medium confidence
$1,204.73Per year, after benefits, commuting

Exact figure. This calculator has no modeled range — the number follows directly from your inputs.

  • United States average
  • Assumptions 2026.07.1

Why medium: no state was resolved, so national averages were used; this is exact arithmetic on your inputs and the published figures used, so there is no modeled range.

Key figures

Offer A — total value
$113,885
Offer B — total value
$112,680
Offer A — per hour
$48.67
Offer B — per hour
$54.17
Gap as a share of the larger offer
105.8%
Offer B before cost of living
$112,680What offer B is worth in its own city, before adjusting for what money buys there.

Cost breakdown

Estimated cost of each component, with low, typical, and high values.
ComponentLowTypicalHigh
Offer A is worth more by$1,204.73$1,204.73$1,204.73

The rows above are the figures the offer a is worth more by is worked out from, not parts that add up to it.

For reference — already included above

  • Offer A — cash$104,500
  • Offer A — employer benefits$11,000
  • Offer B — cash$98,400
  • Offer B — employer benefits$14,280
  • Offer A — commuting cost$1,615.27
  • Offer B — commuting cost$0

What moved your estimate

  • Offer A is ahead by $1,205

    On the numbers entered, offer A is worth about $1,205 a year more — 1.1% of the larger package. That is close enough that the money should not decide it. At this margin the work itself, the people, and the schedule matter more than the difference.

  • The weeks are not the same length

    Offer A expects 5 more hours a week. Per hour, A pays $48.67 and B pays $54.17. Comparing annual totals across different working weeks compares different amounts of your life, which is why the hourly figures are given.

  • Offer B has 5 more paid days off

    Not added to either total, because leave is already inside the salary. It is worth roughly $2,010 of salary equivalent, and it is often what separates two offers that look identical.

  • Equity is counted at face value

    Both offers take equity at whatever figure you entered. It is the least certain component of any package: it depends on a valuation holding and on you staying long enough to vest. If one offer leans on it, consider re-running with that figure halved and seeing whether the answer changes.

  • Commuting costs differ substantially

    Offer B costs about $1,615 a year less to get to. That is money, and it is money that never appears in a salary comparison.

How this number was produced
  1. Offer Acash + benefits − commuting$113,885
  2. Offer Bcash + benefits − commuting$112,680
  3. Differenceoffer A advantage$1,205

Adjustments applied

  • Cost of living×1.00

    No adjustment applied.

  • Relative weekly hours×1.13

    45 hours against 40.

  • Commuting cost per mile×0.76

    23 cents a mile — fuel at $4.157/gal over 31 MPG, plus wear.

Notes and sources5 notes, 3 sources

Worth knowing

  • Paid time off is not added to either total, because it is already paid for through the salary. The difference between the two is reported separately, since it is frequently the thing that actually separates two similar offers.
  • No cost of living index is built in. The published indices disagree with one another, they average across a whole metropolitan area, and none of them know whether you already own a home or would be renting. The adjustment is a field you fill in with a figure you have reason to believe.
  • Commuting is priced as fuel plus wear, using the current published fuel price for your state. It is subtracted from each offer, because a job that costs $3,000 a year to reach pays $3,000 less than the same job next door.
  • Taxes are not modeled. If the two offers are in different states this can matter a great deal — state income tax ranges from nothing to over 13% — and it is worth working out separately before deciding.
  • The number this produces is the financial half of the decision. It cannot weigh the work, the people, the manager, the stability of the employer, or what the role does to your options in three years, and those routinely matter more than the gap shown here.

Sources

  • U.S. Energy Information Administration, Weekly Retail Gasoline and Diesel Prices — regular grade, all formulations, by region and selected stateprimaryWeek of 2026-09-07retrieved 2026-09-11
  • U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Employer Costs for Employee Compensation (June 2026); U.S. Department of Labor Wage and Hour Division, Fair Labor Standards Act overtime and Part 541 exemption regulationsprimaryJune 2026retrieved 2026-09-11
  • Fuel economy anchored to the U.S. EPA Automotive Trends Report (model year 2024 real-world values); ownership cost components compiled from IRS Notice 2026-10 and IR-2026-29 standard mileage rates, U.S. DOE Alternative Fuels Data Center guidance, and editorial baselines where no agency publishes a figuremixed2026retrieved 2026-07-31

One has better insurance, the other a longer commute; one expects 45 hours, the other 40. Any of those can be worth more than the difference in pay, and none of them appear when you compare the headline numbers. This calculator puts both offers on the same basis and shows what actually separates them.

Methodology

How this calculator works

Putting two offers on one basis

Each offer is reduced to what it is worth over a year: cash, plus what the employer pays toward retirement and insurance, minus what it costs you to get there. Then, optionally, adjusted for what money buys in each location.

Paid leave is handled separately rather than added, because it is already inside the salary. Reporting it as its own line keeps the comparison honest while still surfacing a difference that often decides the question.

The per-hour figures exist because annual totals hide different working weeks. An offer paying 8% more for 12% more hours is paying less.

Why there is no built-in cost of living index

Published cost-of-living indices disagree with one another, sometimes by ten points for the same pair of cities. They average across an entire metropolitan area, and housing — the component that actually drives the difference — varies more within a metro than between many of them.

They also cannot know your situation. Someone who already owns a home outright experiences a high-cost city very differently from someone renting into it. Rather than apply a number that looks authoritative and is not, this asks you for a figure you have reason to believe, and shows the unadjusted total alongside so you can see exactly what the adjustment did.

What is left out on purpose

Taxes. If the offers are in different states this can exceed everything else on the page — state income tax runs from zero to over 13%, and some cities add their own. It deserves a proper answer rather than an approximation, and it is worth getting one before you decide.

Everything that is not money: the work, the manager, the people, the employer’s stability, and what the role does to your options in three years. Those routinely outweigh the gap this calculator produces, which is why the result is framed as a difference in dollars rather than a recommendation.

Location and data

Where the numbers come from

Location is optional, and we only ask for a ZIP code or a state — never a street address. A ZIP code is matched to its state using published postal prefix ranges, and that state is used to look up labor and price rows in the tables below. If you leave it blank, or your ZIP cannot be matched, the estimate falls back to a national average and says so on the result.

Nothing you enter is transmitted or stored. The calculation runs entirely in your browser, and the only place your inputs appear is in the page URL, so you can bookmark or share a result if you choose to.

  • primaryWeek of 2026-09-07v2026.09.1

    U.S. Energy Information Administration, Weekly Retail Gasoline and Diesel Prices — regular grade, all formulations, by region and selected state

    EIA publishes weekly retail gasoline prices for the nation, for each Petroleum Administration for Defense District (PADD) sub-region, and for nine individual states. States EIA does not publish separately take their PADD sub-region price, which is the finest published geography available; every result discloses which of the two applied. Prices are a weekly snapshot and move faster than any other figure on this site, so every calculator that uses them lets you type in the price you actually paid.

  • mixed2026v2026.07.1

    Fuel economy anchored to the U.S. EPA Automotive Trends Report (model year 2024 real-world values); ownership cost components compiled from IRS Notice 2026-10 and IR-2026-29 standard mileage rates, U.S. DOE Alternative Fuels Data Center guidance, and editorial baselines where no agency publishes a figure

    Two numbers here come straight from the EPA: the model year 2024 fleet-wide real-world average of 27.2 MPG and the truck SUV average of 25.7 MPG. The other class averages are editorial estimates positioned around those published anchors, and every one of them describes a NEW vehicle — the average vehicle actually on the road is roughly twelve years old and less efficient, which is why each class carries a range rather than a point. Depreciation, maintenance, tires, and registration are assumptions: no federal agency publishes them per vehicle, and the commercial datasets that do are licensed products we have not bought. Each is registered in the assumption registry with its observed range and rationale, and each is adjustable in every calculator that uses it.

  • primaryJune 2026v2026.09.1

    U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Employer Costs for Employee Compensation (June 2026); U.S. Department of Labor Wage and Hour Division, Fair Labor Standards Act overtime and Part 541 exemption regulations

    Compensation shares are the published BLS Employer Costs for Employee Compensation figures for June 2026 — employer cost per hour worked, which is what an employer spends rather than what an employee receives after tax. The Fair Labor Standards Act figures are the federal floor only. Many states set stricter rules, and no state rules are encoded here, so nothing in this dataset should be read as establishing what any particular worker is owed.

Full detail on every dataset is on the data sources page. Spotted something wrong? Report incorrect data.

Calibration

The judgements behind this estimate

These are the figures we chose rather than measured. For each one we record the range of values found across references, what we selected, and why — because an estimate you cannot interrogate is not much better than a guess. The 0 marked high risk are the ones most likely to be wrong and most consequential when they are.

  • Cost of living adjustment left to the userhigh confidence
    Observed range
    -60 — 200 (typical 0)percent difference between locations
    Why this value
    A deliberate decision not to build in an index. Published cost-of-living indices disagree with one another, sometimes by ten points for the same pair of cities; they average across a whole metropolitan area when housing varies more within a metro than between many of them; and they cannot know whether the user already owns a home. Applying one would look authoritative while being wrong in ways the reader could not see.
    Applies to
    The whole point of the field, supplied by the user rather than by us.
    Known limits
    Puts the burden on the user to supply a defensible number. The alternative was to supply an indefensible one silently.
    Sources
    No index used. The result shows both the adjusted and unadjusted totals so the effect of the user's figure is visible.
    Last verified
    2026-07-31 · reviewed annual
  • Working days in a year after leave and holidayshigh confidence
    Observed range
    210 — 250 (typical 230)days per year
    Why this value
    260 weekdays less roughly eleven holidays and three weeks of leave. Used to convert a weekly remote pattern into an annual count of days not commuted.
    Applies to
    Not regionally variable.
    Known limits
    Actual leave entitlement varies widely, which is why the field is editable.
    Sources
    Derived from the calendar: 52 weeks times 5 weekdays; Federal holiday count published by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management
    Last verified
    2026-07-31 · reviewed biennial

Cost factors

What changes the price most

Employer health contribution
Often the largest non-salary difference. A $150 monthly gap is $1,800 a year that never appears in the salary comparison.
Expected hours
Decides what the salary is per hour. Five extra hours a week is a 12% pay cut in real terms.
Commuting
A 30 mile round trip costs roughly $2,100 a year in fuel and wear alone, before counting the time.
Equity
Can dominate a comparison and is the least certain line. Worth re-running with it halved.
Paid time off
Not added to either total but frequently decisive. Five days is about 2% of salary.
Cost of living
Can reverse the answer entirely between two cities, and is the input you should be most careful about.

Questions

Frequently asked

How do I compare two job offers?

Reduce both to annual total value: cash, employer-paid benefits, minus commuting costs, adjusted for cost of living if the locations differ. Then check the per-hour figures, because different expected hours can reverse the answer. Then set the money aside and think about the work, since a gap under about 5% rarely justifies choosing the job you want less.

Is a higher salary always the better offer?

No, and often not. Benefits average about a third of total compensation, so a $5,000 salary advantage can be wiped out by worse health insurance or a weaker retirement match. A longer commute and longer hours both work the same way, quietly.

How much is a shorter commute worth?

In money, roughly 31 cents a mile in fuel and wear — so a 30 mile round trip is about $2,100 a year. In time, a 45 minute round trip is around five working weeks annually. This calculator subtracts the money and leaves the time for you to weigh.

How do I adjust a job offer for cost of living?

Divide the package by how much more expensive the new location is. A $100,000 offer in a city 25% more expensive is worth about $80,000 in your current terms. Be careful with the percentage: published indices disagree, and housing dominates it, so your own rent or mortgage comparison is usually more reliable than a national index.

Should I count equity in a job offer comparison?

Count it, then discount it. It depends on a valuation holding and on you staying long enough to vest, and median tenure is often shorter than a four-year schedule. If halving the equity figure changes which offer wins, the comparison is resting on the least reliable number in it.