How to use it
- Enter your pay and choose what it is per: hour, day, week, two weeks, half month, month, quarter or year.
- Set the hours and days you work a week and the weeks you are paid in a year (52 if paid time off is paid; fewer if you take unpaid weeks).
- Read every other period in the table. Choose the federal method if you are a U.S. federal employee or want the 2,087-hour convention.
- Enter one of your paydays to see how many paydays each of the next three years has.
How it calculates
The standard method multiplies an hourly rate by hours a week and paid weeks to get a yearly amount, then spreads the year evenly: 52 weekly, 26 biweekly, 24 semimonthly, 12 monthly and 4 quarterly payments; the daily figure is pay per working day. The federal method follows 5 U.S.C. 5504(b) as the Office of Personnel Management applies it: the hourly rate is the yearly rate divided by 2,087, rounded to the nearest cent with half a cent rounding up, and the weekly and biweekly rates are that hourly rate times 40 and 80. OPM explains that 2,087 averages the paid hours in calendar years over a 28-year cycle, since a year can hold 2,080, 2,088 or 2,096 working hours; before 1984 the divisor was 2,080.
The payday counter steps forward and back from the payday you enter in whole days, so time zones and daylight saving cannot shift it, and counts the paydays falling in each calendar year.
What we tested
On October 14, 2026 we checked the page’s own functions against exact fractions: 3,000 random conversions (24,000 displayed amounts, 1,338 of them landing exactly on half a cent) all matched to the cent; 1,004 federal conversions matched the 2,087-hour rule, including OPM’s published examples; and 2,000 payday counts matched Python’s calendar (273 of them were 27- or 53-payday years). In Chromium: $25 an hour showed $52,000.00 a year, $4,333.33 a month, $2,166.67 semimonthly, $2,000.00 biweekly, $1,000.00 a week and $200.00 a day; $75,000 a year was $36.06 an hour (standard) and $35.94 (federal, $2,875.20 biweekly); OPM's $70,623 example showed $33.84 and $2,707.20; 50 paid weeks gave $50,000.00; biweekly Fridays from January 2, 2026 showed 27 paydays in 2027; letters in the pay showed a message; the page fitted a 390 px phone with no errors.
| Example | Result |
|---|---|
| $25 an hour, 40 hours, 52 weeks | $52,000.00 a year, $4,333.33 a month, $2,000.00 biweekly |
| $75,000 a year, standard (2,080 hours) | $36.06 an hour |
| $75,000 a year, federal (2,087 hours) | $35.94 an hour |
| OPM example: $70,623 a year (federal) | $33.84 an hour, $2,707.20 biweekly |
| OPM example: $89,033 a year (federal) | $42.66 an hour, $3,412.80 biweekly |
| OPM example: $77,771 a year (federal) | $37.26 an hour, $2,980.80 biweekly |
| OPM example: $143,913 a year (federal) | $68.96 an hour, $5,516.80 biweekly |
All amounts are gross pay; overtime, bonuses and deductions are not included. For hours actually worked in a week, with overtime, use the Hours Calculator.
Sources
Checked on .
Frequently Asked Questions
Built by Derek Giordano · Part of Ultimate Design Tools