Pay Raise Calculator — Salary & Wage Increase Calculator

Enter your current pay and your raise — a percentage, a flat amount, or your new rate — and see your new pay per hour, per paycheck, per month and per year, instantly and free.

Pay Raise Calculator

How to Use This Pay Raise Calculator

1. Enter your current pay and its pay period. Type the amount exactly as your employer quotes it — an hourly wage, a weekly or biweekly paycheck, or an annual salary — and pick that period from the list.
2. Pick the type of raise. Choose a percentage raise for a standard merit increase, a flat dollar amount for an hourly bump like $1.50 an hour, or new pay rate if your employer already told you the new figure and you want the percentage.
3. Add hours and weeks only if they are not standard. Blank fields use 40 hours a week and 52 weeks a year (2,080 hours). Part-time, seasonal and school-year workers should enter their real schedule so the annual figures stay honest.
4. Read the new pay, the raise amount and the verdict. The result shows your new pay in every pay period side by side with your old pay, grades the raise against current US benchmarks, and — if you added inflation — shows your real raise after prices.
5. Tap an example chip to check a known case. The $20 an hour example must return $20.80 an hour at a 4% raise. Use the Over Time tab to project future raises and the Target tab to work out the raise a goal salary needs.

Why Use This Pay Raise Calculator?

• It runs all three raise modes. OmniCalculator and GoodCalculators run percentage, flat amount and new pay rate; MarketBeat runs only two. This raise calculator runs all three, plus two tabs no competitor on this page offers — a raise calculator over time and a target raise solver.
• Every pay period, one honest percentage. The tool converts your pay to an annual figure first, applies the raise once, then converts back. A 10% raise therefore stays 10% per hour, per week, per paycheck and per year — and the monthly figure is the true annual salary divided by 12, never a 22-workday shortcut that disagrees with the annual total.
• It grades your raise. A percentage alone tells you nothing. The verdict compares your raise with the cost-of-living, merit, strong-performance and promotion bands employers actually use in 2026, so you know whether to celebrate or negotiate.
• It shows the real raise, not just the nominal raise. Add an inflation rate and the tool applies the exact real-raise formula. A 3% raise in a 3.4% CPI year is a small pay cut in purchasing power, whatever the payslip says.
• Payroll teams can run it in reverse. As a payroll raise calculator it prices a planned increase before it is announced: enter the current rate and the proposed rate and it returns the exact percentage and the annual payroll cost per employee.
• Instant, private and free. No sign-up, no button to hunt for — results update as you type, the math runs in your browser, and nothing you enter leaves your device.

Who Is This Pay Raise Calculator For?

• Hourly workers who got a raise in cents or dollars an hour and want the annual figure — a $1 an hour raise at 40 hours a week is $2,080 a year.
• Salaried employees before an annual review checking whether a 3% merit increase keeps up with inflation and what a 5% ask would actually pay.
• Job changers comparing offers who need the exact percentage jump from a current salary to an offered salary before they accept or counter.
• Managers and small-business owners costing a team-wide increase: run the percentage once per pay band and multiply by headcount for the payroll budget.
• HR and payroll staff verifying that a stated percentage and a stated new rate agree — the reverse mode catches a rounding or data-entry error in seconds.
• Anyone planning ahead — the Over Time tab shows what steady 3% raises do to a salary and to lifetime earnings across 5, 10 or 30 years.

How to Calculate a Salary Increase Using the Calculator

Start with the figure on your payslip or offer letter. If you earn an hourly wage, enter the wage and choose Hourly; if you earn a salary, enter the salary and choose Annual. Enter the raise exactly as your employer states it — a percentage, a flat amount, or the new rate itself. The calculator annualises your pay using your hours per week and weeks per year, applies the raise to the annual figure, and then splits the new annual pay back into hourly, daily, weekly, biweekly, semi-monthly and monthly amounts. Because the raise applies once, on the annual total, every period in the breakdown rises by the same percentage, and the periods always add back up to the annual salary.

That order matters more than it sounds. A tool that calculates a monthly figure from a 22-workday shortcut produces a monthly pay that no longer matches its own annual salary divided by 12. A tool that applies a percentage raise to an hourly rate and a dollar raise to a salary without converting first produces two different answers for the same raise. Annualise, apply, convert back — that is the whole method, and it is why the numbers here match a payroll system.

An Example of How to Calculate a Salary Increase

Three worked examples cover the cases people search for most. Each one loads into the calculator when you tap its chip, so you can change any number and watch the result move.

Read the first example closely, because it answers the most common hourly question on this page. A 4% raise on $20 an hour adds $0.80 an hour. That sounds small until you annualise it: $0.80 × 40 hours × 52 weeks = $1,664 a year, $138.67 a month and $64.00 in every biweekly paycheck. Small hourly raises are real money, and the annual figure is the one to compare against rent, a car payment or a competing offer.

How Do I Calculate a Pay Raise on My Own?

You need three short formulas, and every salary raise calculator on the internet — including this one — runs on them.

By hand: convert the percentage to a decimal (5% becomes 0.05), multiply your current pay by that decimal to get the raise amount, then add it to your current pay. A 5% raise on a $1,000 monthly salary is $1,000 × 0.05 = $50, so the new salary is $1,050. The reverse works the same way backwards: an hourly wage that moves from $25 to $30 rose by ($30 − $25) ÷ $25 × 100 = 20%. One useful benchmark hides in the reverse formula: a raise of 8.33% adds exactly one extra month’s salary across a year, because one month is one twelfth of your annual pay.

Is a 10% annual raise the same as a 10% monthly raise?

Yes. A percentage raise scales every pay period by the same factor, because each period is a fixed slice of the same annual pay. A 10% raise on $1,000 a month adds $100 a month, and on the $12,000 annual salary it adds $1,200 a year — the same raise described two ways. Percentages never need converting between periods; only dollar amounts do.

How Much Is a 3% Raise?

How much is a 3 percent raise depends entirely on what it lands on, which is why “how much is a 3% raise” has no single answer. The raise amount is always 3% of your current pay: $900 on $30,000, $1,500 on $50,000, $3,000 on $100,000. Here is the full table for the salaries and wages people ask about most:

Is a 3% raise good? In a low-inflation year it is a standard merit increase — Mercer puts the average 2026 merit budget at 3.2%. In a year when CPI inflation runs at 3.4%, a 3% raise leaves your purchasing power slightly behind where it started. The percentage is average; whether it is good depends on the inflation rate beside it, which is why the calculator accepts an inflation figure and reports your real raise.

How Much Is a 4% Raise Per Hour?

Multiply your hourly wage by 0.04 — that product is your raise per hour, and adding it gives your new wage. On $15 an hour a 4% raise is $0.60 an hour, worth $1,248 a year at full time. On $20 an hour it is $0.80 an hour, worth $1,664 a year.

And a 6% raise is how much?

People often type the question as “6 raise is how much” — the answer follows the same rule: 6% of your current pay. A 6% raise turns $20 an hour into $21.20 an hour (+$2,496 a year), a $50,000 salary into $53,000 (+$3,000), and a $60,000 salary into $63,600 (+$3,600). At 6% you are well above the standard merit band and into strong-performance territory. A 5% raise, the most searched middle case, turns $20 an hour into $21.00 and $50,000 into $52,500 — an extra $208.33 a month and $96.15 in every biweekly paycheck.

What Is a Good Pay Raise Percentage?

A good raise depends on why it is given. Employers budget raises in bands, and the same percentage means very different things in different bands:

The working rule: under 3% usually trails inflation, 3–5% is a normal good raise for staying in the same role, around 5% is above average without a promotion, and anything from 8% upward normally arrives with a promotion, a market correction or a new employer. Run your own figure through the percentage raise calculator above and the verdict box grades it against exactly these bands.

What Is the Average Raise After 1 Year of Work?

The average raise after 1 year of work in the US sits between 3% and 3.5% for 2026. WTW’s Salary Budget Planning Report puts the average US salary-increase budget at 3.5% for 2026, the same as the 2025 actual figure. Mercer’s survey puts planned merit increases at 3.2% and total increases at 3.5%; WorldatWork forecasts a 3.6% mean increase; the Conference Board projects 3.4% on average. MarketBeat summarises the typical individual range as 2% to 5% a year, and Indeed’s guidance calls 3–5% a fair annual raise.

Two cautions keep that average honest. First, these are employer budget averages across whole workforces — your individual merit raise lands above or below the budget depending on performance, pay band position and internal equity. Second, the average merit raise of 3.2% sat just under the 3.4% CPI inflation rate in the year to August 2026, so the average worker’s raise roughly held purchasing power rather than growing it. A first-year raise also depends on timing: many employers pro-rate a raise for a partial year or make new starters wait for the next review cycle, so a first raise after 1 year of work can be smaller than the headline budget figure.

Percentage Raise vs Flat Dollar Raise — Which Is Better?

A percentage raise scales with your pay and compounds: every future percentage raise applies to a larger base, so a 4% raise this year makes next year’s 4% worth more dollars. Percentage raises are the standard for salaried staff and merit reviews. A flat dollar raise pays every worker the same amount, which is common for hourly teams — and it favours lower-paid workers in percentage terms. A $1 an hour raise is a 6.7% raise at $15 an hour but only a 3.3% raise at $30 an hour. Conversely, a 5% percentage raise hands $3,000 to a $60,000 earner and $1,500 to a $30,000 earner for the same performance rating.

Neither is automatically better — convert before you compare. Use the flat amount mode in this salary increase calculator to turn any dollar offer into its percentage, then grade that percentage against the bands above. A flat raise that converts to under 2% is a below-COLA raise wearing a friendly dollar figure.

When Can You Expect a Pay Raise?

Most raises arrive on a predictable cycle. The common triggers are:

• The annual performance review. The single most common raise moment — length of service plus a performance rating, paid once a year, occasionally twice.
• A promotion or expanded role. New responsibility is the strongest raise trigger inside a company, worth 8–15% on average.
• Cost-of-living and inflation adjustments. Employers who skip COLA in a high-inflation year quietly hand their staff a real pay cut, and many adjust pay bands against the Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI and Employment Cost Index.
• A legal change. A rise in the federal, state or local minimum wage lifts hourly wages directly, and often lifts the rates just above the minimum with it to prevent pay compression.
• New skills, certification or a market shift. A qualification that makes you scarcer, or a market rate that moved, both justify a market adjustment raise outside the review cycle.

Raise frequency is not standardised — some employers review annually, some tie every increase to promotion, and some adjust only when a worker is about to leave. Knowing the typical cycle in your workplace tells you when a request is normal and when it needs an exceptional case.

Pay Raise and Inflation — Your Real Raise

The raise on your payslip is the nominal raise. The raise you feel is the real raise: what happens to your purchasing power after prices rise. The exact formula divides one growth factor by the other:

This is why the Over Time tab matters. A worker who receives 3% raises for five years while inflation runs at 3% ends those five years roughly where they started in real terms, even though their nominal salary rose 15.93%. Salary planning that ignores inflation plans a number, not a standard of living.

Does a Pay Raise Change Your Take-Home Pay by the Same Amount?

No — this calculator, like every competitor on this page, works in gross pay. Your take-home (net) pay rises by less than the gross raise, because the extra pay passes through federal and state income tax withholding and FICA — Social Security at 6.2% and Medicare at 1.45% — and a raise can also lift pre-tax deductions that are set as a percentage, such as a 401(k) contribution. A raise can even push part of your income into a higher marginal tax bracket; that bracket applies only to the dollars inside it, never to your whole salary, so a raise never makes you worse off after tax. As a rough guide, a worker in the 22% federal bracket keeps around 70 cents of each extra gross dollar before state tax. Compare offers and raises in gross terms — the way employers quote them — then check your first new payslip for the real net difference per paycheck.

How to Ask for a Raise — and Negotiate It

• Time it well. The best moments are right after a measurable contribution, at the annual review, or when your role has visibly grown — not during a company-wide freeze.
• Arrive with a number. Run your target through the Target tab above. A request for a specific percentage, tied to a specific target salary, negotiates far better than a request for “a bit more”. Negotiation guidance commonly suggests asking 10–20% when you are below market, expecting to settle lower.
• Bring market evidence. Salary benchmarks for your role and region — Payscale, Salary.com and BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics — turn an opinion into a comparison.
• Bring your record. Quantified accomplishments: revenue, savings, output, responsibilities absorbed. Managers approve documented value, not tenure.
• Counter a low offer with the gap, not a complaint. “The offer is a 2% increase; the market rate for this role and my results support 6%, which is $X” — the Target tab gives you the exact dollar figure for any percentage.
• If the money is not there, trade. Extra vacation days, flexible or remote work, a performance bonus, professional development, or a written review date in three months all carry real value — and get the agreed review date in writing.

Got the Raise? What to Do Next

A raise quietly disappears if spending rises to meet it — the pattern called lifestyle inflation. A steadier order: send a fixed share of the increase to high-interest debt first, then build an emergency fund, then lift retirement contributions by at least 1% of pay (you will not feel a 1% contribution rise inside a 3–5% pay rise), and only then upgrade spending. One long-running survey of 450,000 US residents, cited by OmniCalculator, found emotional well-being rising with income up to about $75,000 a year and flattening after it — money spent on experiences and on other people held its value longer than money spent on things. However you split it, revisit the budget in the first month: a raise is worth the most in the month it arrives, because that is when you decide where every new dollar goes.

Pay Raise Formulas — Quick Reference

Some visitors search for this page with the one-word spelling “payraise calculator”, as a “pay raise calc”, or as a “salary raise calculator” — every spelling lands on the same three formulas above, and this page answers all of them.

Frequently Asked Questions

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More free calculators and converters from Jobi99 — the finance and tax tools sit closest to this pay raise calc, and the full cooking and conversion library is one tap away:

Disclaimer: This calculator provides planning estimates in gross pay only. It does not account for income tax, FICA, retirement contributions or other deductions, so your net paycheck increase will be smaller. Raise benchmarks (WTW, Mercer, Payscale, WorldatWork, BLS) are survey averages for guidance — your employer’s budget, your pay band and your performance decide your actual raise.