Compare two job offers side by side by entering base salary, bonuses, and benefits value for each — with an optional cost-of-living adjustment — computed instantly in your browser.
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Comparing two job offers is rarely as simple as comparing two salary numbers. A slightly lower base salary can still be the better offer once a signing bonus, a stronger annual bonus target, or more valuable benefits are added in — and if the two roles are in different cities or countries, the cost of living can change which offer leaves you better off in practice. This calculator totals every figure you enter for each offer into a single annual compensation number, and — only if you choose to enter a cost-of-living index for each location — also shows a purchasing-power-adjusted comparison. Nothing here is estimated automatically or looked up for you: every salary figure, bonus estimate, benefits value, and cost-of-living index comes directly from your own research, so the comparison stays accurate for any two offers, in any two cities, in any country.
When people compare job offers, the instinct is often to look only at the base salary line. But base salary is just one component of what an employer actually offers. Signing bonuses provide an immediate one-time boost; annual bonuses, when reasonably likely to be paid, add a recurring layer of compensation; and benefits — health insurance, retirement contributions, stock grants, extra paid leave — can carry substantial monetary value even though they never show up as a number on a pay stub. Two offers with the same base salary can differ by tens of thousands of currency units once these pieces are added in, and an offer with a lower base salary can sometimes come out ahead overall.
The challenge is that none of these additional components are standardized. A signing bonus might be a flat one-time payment or paid out over a vesting period; an annual bonus might be a guaranteed amount or a target subject to performance; benefits can range from a modest stipend to comprehensive coverage worth a meaningful fraction of the base salary itself. Because employers structure these differently, there is no universal formula that could correctly total them for you without your own estimates of each component's value.
Location adds a second layer of complexity. A salary that looks larger in absolute terms may actually provide less real purchasing power if it is paid in a city or country with a significantly higher cost of living. A cost-of-living index — a number, typically anchored to a baseline of 100, that reflects how expensive a location is relative to that baseline — lets you convert both offers onto a comparable footing. This calculator makes that adjustment optional precisely because not every comparison needs it: if both offers are in the same city, or you are only interested in the raw compensation numbers, you can simply leave the indexes at their default and skip the adjustment.
Ultimately, this calculator's role is arithmetic, not judgment. It totals what you tell it about each offer, optionally adjusts for cost of living using the figures you supply, and shows you the resulting difference clearly. The research and estimation — what a benefits package is really worth to you, how reliable an annual bonus target actually is, which cost-of-living index to trust — remains yours to do, because only you have access to the specific offer details and only you can judge which factors matter most for your own situation.
Total compensation here is your annualized base salary plus any signing bonus, annual bonus, and the value you assign to benefits (health insurance, retirement matching, stock, etc.). You supply each figure — the calculator only adds them together.
A cost-of-living index lets you compare real purchasing power when two offers are in different cities or countries. It's optional because not everyone needs this — if both offers are in the same location, or you only care about raw compensation, you can leave both indexes at 100 (or blank).
Several independent sites and government statistics agencies publish cost-of-living indexes by city, using a chosen baseline (often 100). Use whichever source you trust, and make sure you use the same source and baseline for both offers so the comparison is meaningful.
You estimate it yourself, since benefits (health insurance, retirement contributions, stock grants, and so on) vary enormously by employer. A reasonable approach is to estimate the annual cash value of each benefit, such as an employer's average health-plan cost or the annual value of a retirement match.
Yes. Each offer has its own frequency selector, so you can enter one offer as a monthly figure and the other as an annual figure — the calculator annualizes both before comparing them.