Offer A—
- Whole contract, after costs
- —
- Effective after-cost hourly
- —
- Take-home / week
- —
- Costs / week
- —
Cost benchmarks and education · Offer checklist
CALC
Contract pay comparison
Compare estimated pay after taxes and assignment costs.
Enter two offers below — hourly-plus-allowance or blended — with the overtime rate you agreed to, your tax rate, housing, travel, and fuel. Everything recalculates as you type. Starting figures are EXAMPLE assumptions, not sourced values: replace every one with your own terms.
Job-rate inputs loaded
Only an hourly lower bound and job label were supplied. Confirm the original posting: this calculator does not verify link values. Hours, contract length, and tax rate remain example assumptions. Unknown per diem, overtime, housing, other costs, and travel have been set to zero; zero means unknown, not confirmed free or unpaid. Fill in every term before comparing.
Public job-link rates and labels appear in the URL and browser history. Edits made below stay on this page.
Offer A
Separate: base wage. Blended: select whether the package covers regular or all work hours. Paid travel excluded.
Regular hours guaranteed each week.
Expected overtime hours each week.
The OT rate you agreed to — enter it, 0 allowed. This page does not decide what rate the law requires.
Daily allowance amount.
Days per week the allowance is paid, 0–7.
Length of the contract; must be above 0.
Your combined effective rate, 0–100.
Leave selected while tax treatment is uncertain. Travel stipends and tax home explains the employee reimbursement conditions.
Weekly expenses and one-time costs
Rent near the assignment, per week.
Home rent or mortgage still paid while away.
Groceries, utilities, etc. — not rent, fuel, or tolls.
Total round-trip miles driven each week.
Round-trip relocation miles, once per contract.
Must be above 0.
Price per gallon.
Parking and tolls each week.
Fees and onboarding costs, once per contract.
Travel time and travel pay
Explicit rate paid for travel time.
Paid travel hours each week.
Unpaid travel hours each week.
Once per contract, spread across weeks.
Once per contract, spread across weeks.
Offer B
Separate: base wage. Blended: select whether the package covers regular or all work hours. Paid travel excluded.
Regular hours guaranteed each week.
Expected overtime hours each week.
The OT rate you agreed to — enter it, 0 allowed. This page does not decide what rate the law requires.
Daily allowance amount.
Days per week the allowance is paid, 0–7.
Length of the contract; must be above 0.
Your combined effective rate, 0–100.
Leave selected while tax treatment is uncertain. Travel stipends and tax home explains the employee reimbursement conditions.
Weekly expenses and one-time costs
Rent near the assignment, per week.
Home rent or mortgage still paid while away.
Groceries, utilities, etc. — not rent, fuel, or tolls.
Total round-trip miles driven each week.
Round-trip relocation miles, once per contract.
Must be above 0.
Price per gallon.
Parking and tolls each week.
Fees and onboarding costs, once per contract.
Travel time and travel pay
Explicit rate paid for travel time.
Paid travel hours each week.
Unpaid travel hours each week.
Once per contract, spread across weeks.
Once per contract, spread across weeks.
Results
After-cost pay per week, per contract, and per hour — recalculated on every keystroke.
Offer B—
- Whole contract, after costs
- —
- Effective after-cost hourly
- —
- Take-home / week
- —
- Costs / week
- —
| Line | Offer A | Offer B | A − B |
|---|
Assumptions and method
The assumptions used to calculate these estimates.
- All starting figures are EXAMPLE assumptions, not sourced local values. Replace every one with your own offer terms.
- Tax is a flat combined effective percentage on wages (including overtime and paid travel) plus the allowance only when marked taxable.
- For blended across regular hours, overtime and travel are added separately at the rates you enter. The base wage is derived as (quote × regular hours − allowance) ÷ regular hours.
- For blended across all work hours, the quote covers regular + overtime hours with overtime already included. Base wage = (quote × all work hours − allowance − agreed overtime pay) ÷ regular hours. Paid travel is added separately in every mode. Confirm which quote format the recruiter used.
- Fuel cost is miles ÷ MPG × gas price. Relocation fuel and licensing are spread evenly across contract weeks.
- Contract travel hours are spread evenly across weeks. Unpaid hours count in the effective hourly rate but add no pay.
- The break-even quote is the minimum valid quote covering costs, holding allowance, costs, overtime, and travel fixed. A $0 base wage may already cover costs from other pay; blended quotes must still fund the allowance and any included overtime. “—” means increasing the quote cannot cover costs at your selected tax rate or zero regular hours.
- Calculator edits stay in this page and are not saved or transmitted. Public rates and labels supplied by a job link appear in its URL and browser history.
- This is an arithmetic planning estimate. It makes no tax-home, excludability, or overtime-eligibility determination.
Tax note — allowances
For employees, travel reimbursements may be excluded from wages when the travel and employer accountable-plan conditions are met. A stipend label does not establish eligibility. Tax home generally means your main work area; assignment duration and required records also matter. Travel stipends and tax home explains these conditions and what to confirm with payroll. This calculator uses your tax assumption and does not determine eligibility or actual withholding.
IRS references checked 2026-10-03: Publication 463 (2025) · Publication 15 (2026), employee reimbursements
Federal per-diem figures, when you need the official table: GSA per-diem lookup (linked only — no amounts reproduced here).
Overtime note — enter your agreed rate
Per the Department of Labor: nonexempt employees covered by the FLSA usually must receive overtime at no less than 1.5× the regular rate for hours over 40 in a workweek, but exemptions, state law, employer agreements, and how reimbursements count toward the regular rate all matter. Enter the overtime rate you agreed to — this calculator does not determine what rate the law requires.
Sources checked 2026-10-02: DOL Fact Sheet 23, overtime pay · DOL Fact Sheet 56a, regular rate