Budget
Salary to Hourly Calculator (and Back)
Type either number — hourly wage or annual salary — and get every paycheck cadence, including the two everyone confuses.
- Monthly×12$4,333
- Semi-monthly×24$2,167
- Biweekly×26$2,000
- Weekly×52$1,000
Semi-monthly and biweekly are not the same thing: the biweekly check is $167 smaller, but two months a year you get a third one.
Full story: semi-monthly vs biweekly.
How it works
The two money fields are the same number wearing different clothes, and both are editable. Type an hourly wage and the annual salary recomputes; type a salary and the hourly wage recomputes — the link runs both ways, through the hours and weeks sliders in the middle. At the standard American assumptions of 40 hours a week and 52 weeks a year, that's the famous 2,080-hour year: $25.00 an hour × 2,080 hours = $52,000 gross. Every figure on this page is gross — pre-tax — on purpose; take-home depends on your state, filing status, and benefits, and a fake precise number would be worse than an honest gross one.
The cadence table below the hero is where offers and budgets actually live, and it hides the distinction this page exists to make. Semi-monthly pay is 24 checks a year — the 15th and the last day of each month. Biweekly pay is 26 checks — every other payday, drifting through the calendar. On the defaults that's $2,167 versus $2,000: the biweekly check is $167 smaller, but two months a year deliver a third check. People use the words interchangeably and then wonder why their budget doesn't reconcile.
If you're the semi-monthly kind — paid on the 15th and the last day — budgeting apps have probably been quietly failing you: most only model weekly and monthly repeats. ClariFi is one of the only budgets with true semi-monthly recurrence built in — the schedule most apps forget exists — so rent, paychecks, and the bills pinned to them land on the days they actually happen.
The formula
annual = hourly × hours/week × weeks/year
hourly = annual ÷ (hours/week × weeks/year)
paycheck = annual ÷ 12 · 24 · 26 · 52 monthly · semi-monthly · biweekly · weekly
Example: $25.00/hr × 40 h × 52 wk = $52,000 gross
→ $4,333 · $2,167 · $2,000 · $1,000
Honest assumptions
- Everything is gross (pre-tax), deliberately — no federal, state, or payroll tax is modeled. Take-home varies too much by person and place for one page to fake credibly.
- No overtime, bonuses, tips, or shift differentials — the sliders are plain multiplication. If overtime is a steady part of your pay, your real hourly is higher than the base rate.
- 52 weeks means zero unpaid time off. Take unpaid leave, or work seasonally? Lower the weeks slider — the annual number falls with it.
- Biweekly is treated as exactly 26 checks a year. Calendar drift occasionally delivers 27 in a real year; 26 is the planning convention, and the safe one to budget on.
- This page does arithmetic. It doesn't know your offer letter — it's a starting point, not a plan, and not advice.
Questions people ask
Are semi-monthly and biweekly the same thing?
No, and the difference is money. Semi-monthly is 24 checks a year on fixed dates — typically the 15th and the last day of the month. Biweekly is 26 checks, every 14 days, drifting through the calendar. On this page's defaults the biweekly check is $167 smaller, but two months a year contain a third one — the closest thing a paycheck offers to a built-in bonus. The full story, including how to budget each one, is in semi-monthly vs biweekly.
How much is $25 an hour per year?
$52,000 gross, at 40 hours a week for 52 weeks. The mental shortcut: at full-time hours, doubling the hourly rate gives the salary in thousands — $25/hr → $52K works out almost exactly, because 2,080 hours is close to 2,000. It works in reverse too: a $75K offer is roughly $36/hr before you've opened a calculator.
Why gross and not take-home?
Because take-home is a function of things this page can't know: your state, filing status, retirement contributions, health premiums, and more. Two people with identical salaries can see checks hundreds of dollars apart. Gross is the number offers are quoted in and the honest common denominator — just remember every figure here is before anything is withheld.
What is the 2,080-hours convention?
It's 40 hours × 52 weeks — the standard full-time year US payroll math assumes. When an employer converts a salary to an hourly equivalent (or the reverse), they almost always divide or multiply by 2,080. It quietly assumes no unpaid time off; if your year has fewer paid weeks, the weeks slider tells you what the convention hides.
Related calculators
ClariFi makes tools, not advice. Nothing on this page is a recommendation to buy, sell, or sign anything.
In the app
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