Total Compensation Calculator
Add up what a job offer is really worth: base salary, bonus, annualised equity, retirement match, and the cash value of benefits.
How to use this calculator
- 1Enter the base salary and bonus, as a percentage or a fixed amount.
- 2Add any equity grant with its vesting period — the calculator annualises it for you.
- 3Fill in the retirement match rules and the cash value of benefits.
- 4Set the comparison window to a realistic tenure to stop one-off payments distorting the total.
How the calculation works
total = base + bonus + (equity ÷ vesting years) + (sign-on ÷ window) + match + benefits + PTO value match = base × min(your %, cap %) × match rate- base
- Annual base salary, before tax
- equity ÷ vesting years
- The grant annualised — what actually vests in a year, not the headline total
- match
- Employer retirement contribution, limited by the smaller of your contribution and the cap
- PTO value
- Leave days valued at the daily base rate, so offers with different allowances compare fairly
Equity is divided by its vesting period. A four-year grant is worth a quarter of its face value per year, and only if you stay — quoting the full grant as year-one compensation overstates an offer by three or four times.
The employer match is capped twice over: by what you contribute and by the employer's limit. A 50% match up to 6% of salary is worth 3% of salary at most, so the cap matters more than the headline rate.
A sign-on bonus is spread across the comparison window because it happens once. Comparing two offers on a one-year window flatters whichever has the larger sign-on.
Everything is gross. Tax treatment varies enormously between cash, equity and benefits, and a package that looks larger before tax is not always larger after it.
Worked example
A standard offer with a matched pension
- 1.Base salary: $95,000.
- 2.Bonus at 10% of base: $9,500.
- 3.Retirement match: you contribute 6%, the cap is 6%, so the matched share is 6% of $95,000 = $5,700.
- 4.The employer matches 50% of that: $2,850.
- 5.Total: 95,000 + 9,500 + 2,850 = $107,350.
- 6.Base is 88.5% of the package — the rest is easy to overlook when comparing offers.
Result: $107,350 total compensation
Why a big equity grant is smaller than it looks
- 1.Base $130,000, bonus at 15% = $19,500.
- 2.The $240,000 equity grant vests over 4 years, so it is $60,000 a year — not $240,000.
- 3.Sign-on of $20,000 spread over the 4-year window is $5,000 a year.
- 4.Match: 4% of $130,000 = $5,200, matched at 100% = $5,200.
- 5.Health cover $14,000, other benefits $3,000.
- 6.PTO: 25 days at $130,000 ÷ 260 = $500/day = $12,500.
- 7.Total: 130,000 + 19,500 + 60,000 + 5,000 + 5,200 + 14,000 + 3,000 + 12,500 = $249,200.
Result: $249,200 a year — with equity annualised
Base salary is the part you compare; it is rarely the part that differs
Two offers with identical base salaries can differ by tens of thousands of pounds or dollars a year once everything else is counted. Employers know this and structure packages accordingly, which is why the negotiation that matters is often not about base at all.
The components with the widest spread between employers are equity, retirement match and employer-paid health cover. A full match up to 6% against no match at all is a 6% swing in real compensation, invisible on the offer letter's headline number. Health cover in the US routinely runs $10,000–20,000 a year of employer premium that never appears in any salary comparison.
None of this argues for ignoring base. Base is what raises, bonuses and pension contributions are calculated from, it is what a mortgage lender looks at, and it is the only part guaranteed regardless of performance or share price. It should be weighted heavily — just not exclusively.
The equity mistake that makes offers look twice as good
A grant of $240,000 vesting over four years is $60,000 a year. This is obvious stated plainly and routinely got wrong in practice, because recruiters quote the grant total and candidates hear it as annual compensation.
Worse, equity is the least certain part of a package. RSUs are worth whatever the share price is on each vesting date, which may be well below the price used when the offer was made. Options can expire worthless entirely — they only pay if the price exceeds the strike, and a flat share price for four years means the whole grant is worth nothing.
Private company equity adds another layer: there is no market to sell into, the valuation is whatever the last funding round said, and liquidity may be years away or never arrive. Treating a paper valuation as cash has cost a lot of people a lot of money.
The defensible approach is to annualise the grant, discount it for risk according to how much you believe the valuation, and never rely on it for anything you actually need to pay for.
The match cap, not the match rate
Employer retirement matches are advertised by their headline rate — "we match 100%" — but the cap does the real work. A 100% match up to 3% of salary is worth 3% of salary. A 50% match up to 8% is worth 4%. The lower-sounding rate is the better deal.
The number to compare is rate multiplied by cap. It is also the number to make sure you actually claim: contributing less than the cap forfeits the difference outright, which is the closest thing to free money in personal finance and is left unclaimed remarkably often.
Vesting applies here too. Some employers require two or three years of service before matched contributions are yours to keep. A generous match with a long cliff is worth considerably less to someone who might leave inside it.
What this assumes, and where it stops
Assumptions
- All figures are gross annual amounts, before any tax.
- Equity is valued at the price given and vests evenly across the vesting period.
- The employer match is the smaller of your contribution and the cap, multiplied by the match rate.
- Paid time off is valued at the daily base rate, which is a comparison device rather than extra cash.
Limitations
- Ignores tax entirely. Cash, equity and benefits are taxed very differently, and the largest gross package is not always the largest net one.
- Values equity at today's price with no discount for risk. Share prices move, options can expire worthless, and private company valuations may never become liquid.
- Does not model vesting cliffs, for either equity or the employer match. A grant with a one-year cliff is worth nothing if you leave at month eleven.
- Valuing PTO as cash is a comparison aid, not income — most people cannot exchange leave for money.
- Cost of living, commute, and whether the job is any good are not compensation and are not here.
Common questions
How do I compare two job offers with different equity?
Divide each grant by its vesting period so both are annual figures, then discount for risk according to how confident you are in the valuation. A public company's RSUs are close to cash; a private company's options may never be worth anything. Never compare a four-year grant against another company's annual salary.
What counts as total compensation?
Base salary, bonus, annualised equity, employer retirement contributions, employer-paid insurance premiums, and any other benefit with a cash value — allowances, tuition support, subsidised meals. Anything the employer pays on your behalf is part of what the job is worth, even though it never reaches your bank account.
Is a 100% employer match better than 50%?
Not necessarily — the cap matters more. A 100% match up to 3% of salary is worth 3%, while a 50% match up to 8% is worth 4%. Multiply the rate by the cap to get the real figure, and check whether matched contributions vest immediately or after a qualifying period.
Should I count paid time off as compensation?
As a comparison device, yes — an offer with 30 days of leave is genuinely worth more than an identical one with 15. But it is not spendable income, and most employers will not buy leave back, so treat it as a tiebreaker rather than adding it to a figure you plan to budget against.
Sources
Formula and content last reviewed on .
Results are estimates for information only, not professional advice.
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