Free Pay Raise Calculator

Enter a percentage to get the new salary, or the new salary to get the percentage. Then see the part most raise calculators leave out: what the raise is worth once inflation has taken its cut.

By Trace Bailey Published August 8, 2026 Formulas and assumptions are stated on this page.

Your pay now

Current gross pay

Before tax. Commas and a dollar sign are fine.

That figure is per

Hours in a typical week Only used to turn an hourly rate into an annual one, and to show an hourly row in the table.

The raise

Which number do you have?

Raise

Enter a negative number for a pay cut.

First month at the new rate A mid-year raise pays you less extra cash this calendar year than the annual figure suggests. This works out how much less.

Inflation comparison

Inflation to compare against

% a year

Leave it blank to skip the real-terms comparison.

This field starts at a round 3%. That is an editable assumption we set on 8 August 2026 — not a reported statistic and not a current reading. Replace it with the latest 12-month change in the CPI-U from the BLS Consumer Price Index release, which is published monthly. If your spending is unusual, your personal inflation rate is not the national one, and you should say so with this number.

Every figure here is gross — pay before tax, and before any change to benefits, pension contributions, bonus targets or equity. What this is not: a paycheck estimator. Working out your take-home needs your filing status, state and pre-tax deductions, and a raise can push part of your income into a higher bracket, so the extra cash in your account will be less than the gross increase shown here.

Everything is calculated in your browser. Nothing you type is uploaded, stored or shared.

How a raise is actually calculated

There are only two formulas, and they are inverses of each other. Going forwards, your new pay is current pay × (1 + raise ÷ 100). Going backwards, the raise is (new pay − current pay) ÷ current pay × 100. The detail that trips people up is the denominator: it is always the old figure. Dividing by the new salary instead always understates the raise.

Everything else is division. Your annual rate spread over pay periods gives the per-paycheck figure: 12 monthly payments, 24 semi-monthly, 26 every two weeks, or 52 weekly. Note that 24 and 26 are not interchangeable. “Twice a month” is 24 paychecks; “every two weeks” is 26, because 52 weeks does not divide evenly into months. A $2,184 annual increase is $91 per semi-monthly check but $84 per biweekly one, and if you budget from the wrong one you will be short twice a year.

The number almost no raise calculator shows you

A calculator that tells you your new salary is $64,584 has told you something you could have worked out on your phone. The useful question is whether that number is worth more than the one it replaced. That is the real raise:

real change = ((1 + raise ÷ 100) ÷ (1 + inflation ÷ 100) − 1) × 100

It is a division, not a subtraction, because your raise is a ratio applied to your old pay while inflation is a ratio applied to your old prices. Subtracting gives the gap in percentage points — a different unit, and only an approximation. At 3% against 3.5% the two answers differ by a rounding error; at 25% against 40% the approximation is badly wrong. This tool shows both, and labels which is which.

The corollary is the most quietly useful number on the page: the raise you needed just to stand still is the inflation rate. If prices rose 3.9%, then 3.9% was your break-even. Anything below it is a pay cut that arrives dressed as an increase.

A worked example, end to end

You earn $62,400 a year, paid every two weeks, and you are offered 3.5% effective 1 July. Inflation over the last twelve months was 3.9%.

New salary: 62,400 × 1.035 = $64,584, an increase of $2,184 a year.
Per paycheck: 62,400 ÷ 26 = $2,400 now, 64,584 ÷ 26 = $2,484 after — $84 more every two weeks.
Real change: (1.035 ÷ 1.039 − 1) × 100 = −0.38%. The raise is a real-terms cut, even though it is a genuine $2,184 in cash.
Break-even: 3.9% of 62,400 = $2,433.60. The offer is $249.60 a year short of standing still.
Cash this calendar year: six months at the new rate, so 2,184 × 6 ÷ 12 = $1,092, not $2,184.

The number you take into a conversation with your manager is not “$64,584”. It is “in real terms this leaves me 0.38% behind, about $250 short of break-even” — a specific, checkable claim, where “it doesn’t feel like enough” is not.

Where these calculations usually go wrong

Dividing by the new salary. Always divide the increase by what you earned before.
Confusing percent with percentage points. A raise going from 2% to 3% is a rise of one percentage point and a rise of 50 percent. Both are true, and whoever picks the framing controls the impression. The same trap makes people subtract inflation when they should divide by it.
Quoting the annual figure for a mid-year raise. The rate is annual; the cash you receive this year is prorated. Both are real, they just answer different questions.
Applying a raise percentage to total compensation. Merit increases almost always apply to base salary only. A 4% raise on a $100,000 base inside a $130,000 package moves your total by about 3.1% if nothing else changes — a bonus target set as a percentage of base does rise with it, but an equity grant fixed in dollars does not.
Presenting an after-tax number without a withholding engine. Plenty of free calculators multiply your raise by one flat “tax rate” and print the result as take-home. That number is fiction. This tool refuses to show one rather than show a bad one.

Cost-of-living adjustment vs merit increase

These get used interchangeably and they are not the same thing. A cost-of-living adjustment is an across-the-board uplift intended to keep pay level with prices. Nobody earns it; it is maintenance. A merit increase reflects your performance. A market adjustment corrects a gap between your pay and what the role now commands elsewhere, which is why it often arrives as a larger, one-off number.

The distinction matters because they should stack, not substitute. If inflation was 3.9% and you received 3.5% described as a merit increase, you did not receive a merit increase — you received an under-sized COLA with a compliment attached. It is reasonable to ask which component a number is meant to be.

What to do when your raise lags inflation

One year below inflation is a small loss. Several years is not, because the gap compounds: five years of 3% raises against 4% inflation leaves you roughly 4.7% worse off in real terms, and no single year of it ever reads as alarming — each one is, after all, a raise. The multi-year table in the calculator runs that compounding on your own figures so you can see the shape of it.

Practically: separate the two asks. Request the inflation adjustment as maintenance, with the CPI figure attached, and the merit or market increase as its own conversation. Bundling them lets a below-inflation number pass as recognition. Bring the shortfall in dollars — “$250 below break-even” is harder to wave away than “below inflation” — and if the answer is no, ask what a yes would require and when it would be reviewed. Our salary negotiation scripts cover the wording for that conversation, and if you are weighing an external offer against staying put, the job offer comparison calculator puts both on the same total-compensation footing rather than comparing base against base.

Assumptions, and what this tool does not model

Every figure is gross — before income tax, payroll tax, pension or 401(k) contributions, and insurance premiums.
The raise is assumed to apply to the pay figure you entered and nothing else. Bonus, commission, overtime, shift differentials, equity and benefits are excluded.
A mid-year raise is assumed to start on the first day of the month you select, with whole months thereafter. It does not align to your employer’s actual pay dates.
Pay periods are treated as even: annual ÷ 12, 24, 26 or 52. Real payrolls vary by a cent or two per period from rounding, and a biweekly year occasionally contains 27 paychecks.
Hourly rates are annualised as hourly × hours per week × 52 weeks, with no allowance for unpaid leave.
The multi-year projection simply repeats the two rates you entered. It is arithmetic on your assumptions, not a forecast of either pay or prices.
Amounts are rounded to the cent for display only. Every intermediate calculation runs at full precision, so nothing rounds twice.

Inflation constant: the inflation field is seeded with a round placeholder value, last set on 8 August 2026. It is an editable assumption, not a reported statistic. The authoritative figure is the 12-month percent change in the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U), published monthly by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics — see the BLS Consumer Price Index release. Replace the field with the current reading before relying on the real-terms figures.

Keep going

Pay raise calculator FAQ

Is a 3% raise good?

It depends entirely on two numbers this calculator asks for: inflation, and what your role pays elsewhere. If prices rose 3.5% over the same period, a 3% raise leaves you slightly worse off than you were — the cash went up, what it buys went down. If prices rose 1%, the same 3% is a genuine increase. There is no percentage that is good or bad on its own.

How do I calculate the percentage from my old and new salary?

Subtract the old figure from the new one, divide by the OLD figure, then multiply by 100. From $62,400 to $64,584 that is 2,184 / 62,400 x 100 = 3.5%. Dividing by the new salary instead is the single most common mistake and always understates the raise.

Why is my real raise not simply the raise minus inflation?

Because your raise is applied to your old pay while inflation is applied to your old prices, so the two are ratios of different things. The exact figure is ((1 + raise) / (1 + inflation) - 1) x 100. A 3.5% raise against 3.9% inflation is a real cut of about 0.38%, not 0.4%. Subtraction gives you percentage points, which is close enough at small numbers and drifts further from the truth as the rates get larger.

Does this show my take-home pay after tax?

No, and that is deliberate. Every figure here is gross. A credible net number needs your filing status, state and local rules, pre-tax deductions and the current brackets, and a raise can push part of your income into a higher bracket. A calculator that guesses at all of that with one flat rate is not more useful than an honest gross figure — it is just wrong with more decimal places.

What inflation rate should I put in?

The 12-month percent change in the CPI-U, published monthly by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics at bls.gov/cpi. The field starts at a round placeholder we set by hand, clearly labelled as an assumption rather than a reading, because we cannot update this page every month. If your spending is unusual — a big mortgage, no car, childcare — your personal inflation rate is not the national one, and you can enter that instead.

My raise starts mid-year. Why is the extra cash smaller than the annual increase?

Because you are only paid at the new rate for part of the calendar year. A $2,184 annual increase starting on 1 July pays roughly $1,092 in that year; the full amount only shows up in the first complete year. Companies sometimes quote the annual figure while your bank account sees the prorated one, which is why this tool shows both.

Is a cost-of-living adjustment the same as a raise?

Not in any way that matters. A cost-of-living adjustment is meant to hold your buying power flat as prices rise — it is standing still, applied to everyone regardless of performance. A merit increase or a market adjustment is meant to move you forward. If your only increase this year matched inflation, you had a COLA and no raise, whatever the letter called it.

Are my numbers saved or sent anywhere?

No. The whole calculator runs in your browser. Nothing is uploaded, nothing is stored between visits, and there is no account. Close the tab and the numbers are gone.

Using the number in a conversation?

Every tool here is free, needs no account, and runs entirely in your browser.

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