Free paycheck calculator. Find your net take-home pay per paycheck from an annual salary or hourly wage, with income tax and social contributions withheld for the US, UK, Germany, India, and Canada.
A paycheck calculator shows how much of your gross pay actually lands in your bank account on each pay date. It takes your annual salary or hourly rate, divides it by how often you're paid — weekly, biweekly, semi-monthly, or monthly — then subtracts income tax and social contributions from each period to show your net pay per check.
$1,938.07
Net pay per paycheck
Tax rates and brackets sourced from IRS Revenue Procedure 2025-32 (tax year 2026, single filer) — View source
Last updated:
Paycheck Calculator
Your annual salary and your paycheck are two different numbers. A $60,000 salary doesn't arrive as one payment — it's split across dozens of paychecks over the year, and each one has income tax and social contributions withheld before it reaches your bank account. A paycheck calculator answers the question employees actually ask on payday: not "what do I earn per year," but "how much do I get this time."
That distinction matters for budgeting. Rent, subscriptions, and loan payments are due on fixed dates regardless of how your employer schedules pay. Knowing your real per-check amount — after tax, not before — lets you match income timing to your actual bills instead of estimating from a rounded annual figure.
Pay Frequency
The same annual salary produces a different-sized check depending on how often you're paid. Weekly pay splits your income into 52 checks a year. Biweekly — the most common schedule for US hourly and many salaried workers — splits it into 26 checks, paid every other week regardless of the calendar month. Semi-monthly splits it into exactly 24 checks, paid on two fixed dates each month (commonly the 15th and the last day), which means each semi-monthly check is slightly larger than a biweekly one for the same salary. Monthly pay, common outside the US, consolidates everything into 12 larger checks.
The gap between biweekly and semi-monthly trips people up the most: 26 payments a year is not the same as 24, even though both sound like "twice a month." Biweekly employees get two months a year with three paychecks instead of two — useful to plan for, since those extra-paycheck months are a natural point to catch up on savings goals.
How It's Calculated
Real payroll systems don't recalculate your tax bracket from scratch on every check — they annualize. This calculator does the same: it takes your entered salary (or your hourly rate multiplied by weekly hours and annualized to 52 weeks), applies the selected country's standard deduction and progressive income tax brackets to get your full annual tax bill, adds any capped social contributions like Social Security or National Insurance, and then divides those annual totals evenly by your number of pay periods.
This produces the same net-per-check result regardless of which frequency you choose for the same annual income — switching from biweekly to monthly won't change your total yearly take-home pay, only how it's divided across the year. What it does change is your cash-flow rhythm: fewer, larger checks versus more, smaller ones.
Limitations
This tool covers federal-level income tax and the primary national social contributions for each supported country, using a single filer with no dependents and no pre-tax deductions. It does not include state or provincial income tax (which varies significantly within the US, Canada, and India), employer-sponsored deductions like retirement contributions or health insurance premiums taken before tax, or any personal tax credits and adjustments specific to your situation.
Treat the result as a realistic estimate of the federal/national portion of your paycheck, not a substitute for your actual pay stub or a tax professional's calculation. For a full annual view instead of a per-check breakdown, see our salary calculator.
Practical Use Cases
Comparing job offers with different pay schedules
Seeing the real per-check amount when one employer pays biweekly and another pays semi-monthly or monthly.
Budgeting around fixed bill dates
Matching rent, loan payments, and subscriptions to your actual payday amounts instead of a rough monthly estimate.
Switching from salary to hourly (or vice versa)
Converting an hourly rate and weekly hours into an equivalent annual salary and per-check take-home pay.
Planning around three-paycheck months
Spotting the two months a year that bring an extra biweekly paycheck, and planning savings around them.
Negotiating a raise or new offer
Translating a proposed annual salary increase into what it actually adds to each individual paycheck.
A salary calculator typically shows annual or monthly take-home pay in one lump figure. A paycheck calculator breaks that same income down by your actual pay schedule — weekly, biweekly, semi-monthly, or monthly — so you see the exact amount that lands in your account on each individual pay date, which matters for budgeting around real payday cycles.
Biweekly means you're paid every two weeks, which comes out to 26 paychecks a year (52 weeks / 2). Semi-monthly means you're paid twice a month on fixed dates (like the 15th and last day), which comes out to 24 paychecks a year. Because 26 checks and 24 checks split the same annual salary differently, each biweekly check is slightly smaller than each semi-monthly check, and two months a year have three biweekly paydays instead of two.
This calculator annualizes your income first, applies the country's progressive tax brackets and standard deduction to get your full-year income tax and social contributions, then divides those annual totals evenly across your pay periods. This mirrors how real payroll systems annualize withholding rather than recalculating brackets fresh on every single check.
No — the hourly mode multiplies your rate by your regular weekly hours only. If you regularly work overtime, add your expected overtime earnings to your hourly rate calculation manually, or switch to salary mode and enter your total expected annual income including overtime.
This calculator models federal-level income tax and the core social contributions listed for each country (like Social Security and Medicare in the US, or National Insurance in the UK) using current published rates. It does not account for state or local taxes, pre-tax deductions like 401(k) or health insurance premiums, filing status other than single, dependents, or other personal withholding adjustments — all of which can change your real take-home pay.