Job Offer Comparison Calculator

How the total is calculated

Every figure is annual, gross, and in dollars. Nothing here is taxed. The whole comparison is one sum:

base salary + (target bonus % × base) + (signing bonus ÷ years you spread it over) + annual equity + employer 401(k) match + employer health contribution + other stipends − your insurance premiums

Annual equity is the grant value divided by the vesting period for RSUs, and (share price − strike) × options ÷ vesting period for stock options, floored at zero. The floor matters: an option whose strike is above the current share price is not worth a negative amount, it is worth nothing.

Three of those lines are the ones people skip. The employer 401(k) match is cash the employer pays into your retirement account; a match worth 3% of a $150,000 base is $4,500 a year that simply does not exist at an employer with no match. The employer health contribution is what the company pays toward your premium — find it on the benefits summary as the difference between the total premium and your payroll deduction, because a generous plan and a thin one are real money that never appears in the salary line. And your own premiums come straight back off, since that money never reaches you.

A day of PTO is priced at base salary ÷ 260, but it is not added to the total: for a salaried employee those days are already paid out of base salary, so adding them counts the same money twice. The tool shows the value in a clearly excluded part of the table, so you can weigh five extra days against a few thousand dollars.

A worked example where the bigger salary loses

Press Load the worked example above and you get these two offers. Acme is the current job: $150,000 base, a 10% target bonus ($15,000), $80,000 of public-company RSUs vesting over four years ($20,000 a year), a 401(k) match worth $4,500, $9,600 of employer health contribution, $600 of stipends, and $2,400 of premiums you pay. That totals $197,300 a year.

Northwind is the new offer, and it looks better: $170,000 base — $20,000 more — plus a $20,000 signing bonus, $14,400 of employer health contribution, no premiums, and $1,200 of stipends. But there is no bonus, no 401(k) match, and no public RSUs. Spread the signing bonus over two years and Northwind totals $195,600. It pays $1,700 a year less despite the higher salary, and in year three, when the signing bonus runs out, it pays $185,600 — $11,700 behind.

Northwind also offers 40,000 options at a $1.10 strike against a $3.60 409A price, which looks like $25,000 a year. That sits in its own band, because exercising all 40,000 options costs $44,000 of your own cash, the shares cannot be sold, and the whole amount can go to zero. If it pays out in full, Northwind wins by $23,300 a year. If it does not, Acme wins by $1,700. That single unknowable is the entire decision — and it is exactly what a calculator that folds options into one big number hides.

Where offer comparisons go wrong

Comparing base to base. Base salary is one line out of eight; the other seven are where two offers usually differ.

Treating a signing bonus as recurring. Some calculators add the whole signing bonus to year-one compensation and leave it there. It is one payment, usually repayable in full if you leave inside twelve months, and it is not part of your run rate.

Valuing private equity at face value. A 409A appraisal is not a bid. Liquidation preferences can pay investors before common shareholders see anything, later funding rounds dilute you, and a four-year grant with a one-year cliff is worth exactly zero if you leave in month eleven.

Adding PTO to the total. Double-counting money already inside base salary.

Applying an average tax rate. A calculator that shows “estimated take-home” from a single national rate is inventing a number. Two offers in different states, with different bonus structures and different pre-tax deductions, do not share a tax rate.

Letting a blank field silently mean zero. If you look up one employer’s health contribution and not the other’s, the gap on that line is not real. This tool says so out loud when it spots it.

Edge cases it handles

• Underwater options. If the strike is at or above the share price, the value is zero, not a negative number, and the tool says why.
• Pasted formatting. “$150,000” pastes cleanly. A plain browser number field discards it and reports an empty value, which is how a pasted salary quietly becomes zero elsewhere. Anything genuinely unreadable produces a message here, not a zero.
• Typos and impossible values. Negative salaries, a bonus entered as dollars in the percent box, a vesting period of zero, 4,000 days of PTO — each is caught, capped or rejected, and explained. There is no path that displays NaN or an infinite total.
• Life after the signing bonus. A separate row shows what each offer pays once the one-time money stops, which is the number you live on.

What this deliberately does not model

No tax of any kind and no take-home estimate. No cost of living, relocation, or commute. No vesting cliffs, and no vesting schedule on the 401(k) match. No equity refreshers, ESPP discount, or pension. No probability that a target bonus pays — it is assumed to pay in full, the best case. And nothing about job security, the manager, or what the role does for your career, which is usually the part that matters most.

One number worth knowing that this tool does not apply: a signing bonus is supplemental wages, and employers commonly withhold federal tax on it at a flat 22% for supplemental payments up to $1 million rather than at your normal rate — see IRS Publication 15 (Circular E) , checked against the 2026 edition. That is withholding, not your final tax, and it is why the deposit looks smaller than the headline. Every figure in the calculator is gross, before any withholding.

Next: the 401(k) match calculator shows how much of a match you give up by under-contributing, the salary to hourly calculator converts the winner into a per-hour figure, and the pay raise calculator puts a counter in dollars and percent.