Total Rewards Offer Comparator

Purpose and model boundary

This calculator compares up to four job offers over the same stretch of time, from one to ten years after a common start date. Each offer's pay and benefits are kept in separate lanes rather than added into one number straight away: cash you can spend, employer money that goes into retirement and health savings accounts, employer-paid health premiums that fund your coverage, vested equity you can sell, vested equity you cannot sell yet, and paid time off, which is time rather than money. Every dated amount is discounted back to the start date at a rate you choose, and the discounted lanes you choose to count make up each offer's comparable value. The main results are the offer with the highest comparable value and how each offer compares with the one you pick as the benchmark.

Two further questions can be added through the calculation choice. Solve salary finds the base salary that would make one chosen offer worth exactly as much as the benchmark. Scenario grid shows, in an 11 by 11 table, how that offer's advantage over the benchmark moves when its share price grows faster or slower and its bonus pays out above or below what you assumed.

For what one salary leaves in each paycheck after federal withholding, payroll taxes and pre-tax deductions, use the Take Home Pay Paycheck Calculator.

Every figure on this page is computed by the spreadsheet; the page adds nothing to it. The model is educational. The share prices, growth rates and payout factors are your assumptions, not forecasts, and the simplified after-tax view is not a tax calculation. It is not financial, investment, tax or legal advice.

Inputs and units

• Start date: the first day of work under every offer. All values are discounted back to it, and comparison year n runs from the day the (n − 1)th anniversary falls to the day before the nth.
• Years to compare: a whole number from 1 to 10. The comparison ends the day before the last anniversary.
• Departure date, optional: the last day you would work, counted as a full working day. Vesting, bonus eligibility and signing repayments are decided against it. Leave it blank to stay through the whole comparison.
• Discount rate: the yearly return you could earn elsewhere, from 0% to 30%. Enter 0% to add amounts at face value.
• Offers, one row per offer from the first row, up to four: a name, the pay frequency (monthly, semimonthly or biweekly) and the starting annual base salary are needed; the bonus target as a share of base salary earned, the bonus rule and the days after each offer year that the bonus is paid; a one-time signing and relocation payment with the date each is received; your yearly share and the employer's yearly share of health and other benefit premiums and their yearly growth; the employer's retirement contribution as a share of base salary earned and an optional yearly cap; the employer's yearly HSA deposit; paid days off a year; and, when the offer has equity, the share price on the start date. A blank optional cell means none, except as the column notes say.
• Raises: the raise each offer gives at the start of years 2 to 10, as a percentage. Enter 0% for no raise; a blank in a year the comparison uses is refused.
• Bonus payout factor and share growth by year: for each offer and year, the bonus payout factor (1.00 pays the target) and the yearly share-price growth.
• Signing and relocation repayment steps: for an offer, the share of each payment you would repay if you left on or before each date.
• Equity grants, up to five per offer and twenty in all: a grant ID you choose (a capital letter followed by up to 15 capital letters or digits), the offer, restricted stock units or options, the grant date, the units, the strike price for an option, and the vesting method. A cliff-then-periodic grant gives the months until fully vested, the cliff in months and the months between vest dates after the cliff. A grant on explicit dates lists its dates and fractions in the vest schedule. An optional liquidity date is the first day you assume the shares could be sold, and the departure rule says whether a lot vesting on your departure date vests.
• Vest schedule, for explicit-dates grants only: up to 240 rows in all and 48 per grant, each a grant ID, a vest date and the fraction of the grant that vests then. A grant's fractions must total 100%, and a grant cannot repeat a date. The rows can be pasted from a spreadsheet and are put in date order, then grant ID order.
• Compare values: pretax, or a simplified after-tax view that applies one flat rate to cash and another to equity.
• Value vested equity at: the vest or liquidity date, whichever is later, or the end of the comparison.
• Count equity you cannot sell yet, and count employer-paid premiums: each yes or no. Either way they are shown on their own lines.
• Hours in a PTO day, and optionally what one paid day off is worth to you. The second only adds a separate leave line.
• Benchmark offer, the offer to solve and stress (any other entered offer), and the steps of the scenario grid: a share-price growth step in percentage points a year and a payout factor step.

Money is in US dollars, nominal; rates are percentages.

Governing relationships

Pay calendar. Each offer has its own explicit pay calendar from the start date. Monthly periods run month to month, semimonthly periods run from the 1st to the 15th and from the 16th to the month end, and biweekly periods are 14 days long. Pay is dated at the end of each period, and a period cut short by the start or by your departure is paid in proportion to the days worked. A 365-day year therefore holds 26 biweekly periods and one day, which earns 26 and 1/14 periods of pay, as a biweekly payroll does. Base salary in year y is the starting salary times every raise up to that year. Amounts are rounded to the cent on the running total within each year, so a year's postings always add up to its rounded annual amount.

Bonus. The bonus for an offer year is

bonus = bonus target × payout factor for that year × base salary earned in that year

paid the stated number of days after the year ends. If you leave first, the bonus rule decides: employed on the payment date, employed at the end of the bonus year, or prorated to departure, which needs no extra factor because the salary earned already stops at your departure.

One-time payments and repayment. A signing or relocation payment counts when it is received on or before your last day. If you leave, the repayment step that applies is the earliest one dated on or after your departure date, so a departure on a step's date uses that step.

Employer accounts and premiums. The employer's retirement contribution is its rate times the base salary earned, limited by the yearly cap if you enter one. The HSA deposit is spread evenly over the pay periods. Both premium shares grow by the premium growth rate each year. Your share is taken from cash. The employer's share is shown as coverage funding, never as cash.

Equity. A cliff-then-periodic grant vests nothing before the cliff, then the cliff's share of the grant on the cliff date (cliff months over total months), then an equal share at each later vest date until it is fully vested. Vest dates fall on the same day of the month as the grant date, or the last day of a shorter month. Units vest in whole numbers, taken from the running total, so the last date always completes the grant. Lots that vested before the start date are already yours under every offer, so they are left out. Lots after your departure are forfeited, and lots after the end of the comparison are unvested; both are reported as unit counts with no value. The share price grows by each year's growth rate from the start-date price, smoothly within each year and anchored on the anniversaries. A vested unit is worth

restricted stock unit value = units × share price on the valuation date

option value = units × max(share price − strike, 0)

The option value is its intrinsic value only. The cash needed to exercise vested options that are in the money is reported beside it and is not subtracted again. A lot is sellable when its valuation date falls inside the comparison; otherwise it is valued at the end-of-comparison price and shown as equity not yet sellable.

Discounting. Every amount is discounted from its own date:

discount factor = (1 + discount rate) ^ −(days from the start date / 365.25)

Comparable value. With the after-tax factors equal to 1 in pretax mode, and to 1 minus each flat rate in the simplified after-tax view,

cash = salary + bonus paid + signing and relocation received − repayments − your premiums

comparable value = cash factor × discounted cash + discounted employer retirement + discounted employer HSA + equity factor × (discounted sellable equity + discounted equity not yet sellable, if counted) + discounted employer-paid premiums, if counted

Employer retirement and HSA money is left untaxed in the after-tax view, because it is tax-deferred. Each offer's advantage is its comparable value less the benchmark's. The best offer is the one with the highest comparable value; a tie goes to the lower offer number. The same lanes added without discounting give the combined value.

Salary solve. Only salary, bonus and employer retirement move with base salary, and each of them can only rise as base salary rises, so the chosen offer's pretax comparable value never falls as its salary rises. The workbook first checks that the target, the benchmark's pretax comparable value, lies between the offer's value at a $0 salary and at a $10,000,000 salary. It then halves that salary range up to 30 times, which narrows it to under one cent, and stops early at the first salary whose value is within $1 of the target. The solve always matches the pretax value. In the after-tax view the after-tax value at the solved salary is shown for information.

Scenario grid. Rows shift every year's share-price growth of the chosen offer by −5 to +5 growth steps, and columns shift every year's bonus payout factor by −5 to +5 payout steps; the benchmark stays at its base case. Equity value depends only on the price path and bonus only on the payout factors, so each cell is the base advantage plus the change in equity value for its row plus the change in bonus for its column. The centre cell is the base case exactly.

Calculation sequence

The spreadsheet first checks the inputs and each table row. It then builds each offer's calendar and pay ledger, the bonuses, the one-time payments and repayments, the employer accounts and premiums, the vesting events and their values, and the discounted and undiscounted totals per offer. In the chosen calculation mode it then runs the salary solve, the scenario grid, or both. A block of consistency checks confirms the arithmetic, including that the solve's salary-dependent part agrees with the main model and that the grid's centre cell equals the base case, before the status is returned.

Outputs and interpretation

The headline is the best offer on your assumptions and its comparable value. The cards also show the benchmark's comparable value and, when the mode includes the chosen offer, its advantage over the benchmark, the difference in undiscounted cash, the matching base salary and how the solve ended, and the number of scenario cells without a value. The offer comparison table lists, for each offer, every lane: salary earned, bonus paid and forfeited, signing and relocation received and repaid, your premiums, cash, employer retirement and HSA money, coverage funding, sellable and not-yet-sellable equity, exercise cash, vested, unvested and forfeited units, paid days off in days and hours, the leave value when you enter one, the combined value, the discounted lanes, the comparable value, the pretax comparable value and the advantage over the benchmark. Further tables give the year-by-year figures for each offer, where the chosen offer's difference from the benchmark comes from, the solve detail and the scenario grid. In the grid, the first column gives each row's growth shift and the column headings count payout-factor steps from −5 to +5, with the payout-factor shift of each step listed below the grid. A cell without a value is explained in the table beside the grid, which has the same layout.

Any warnings appear under the results. The model version and the other run details are in the downloaded CSV and JSON files. The per-row check tables are returned to the API and MCP, and the first problem they find is named in the status.

Under the default inputs, two offers start on 4 January 2027 and are compared over four years at a 5% discount rate, pretax. Offer A pays 120,000 dollars a year monthly with 3% raises and a 10% bonus; Offer B pays 110,000 dollars biweekly with 4% raises, a 15% bonus, a 20,000-dollar signing payment, a 5,000-dollar relocation payment and 2,000 restricted stock units vesting monthly over four years after a one-year cliff. Offer B's comparable value is 624,538.07 dollars against Offer A's 510,960.69, so Offer B is the best offer. Its cash over the four years is 551,154.23 dollars against Offer A's 541,894.46: most of the difference is equity. The last 42 units vest one day after the comparison ends and are excluded, and the final year's bonuses are paid after the end and are included.

The first chart adds up each offer's discounted cash and comparable value year by year. The second stacks each offer's discounted lanes into one column, with your premiums below zero.

Validation and status logic

The workbook returns one status, chosen in this order: NOT VALID, then CHECK, then OK.

• NOT VALID names the first problem it finds, checked in this order: the scalar inputs (the mode, the start date, the years, a departure before the start or after the end, the discount rate, and the after-tax rates, hours, leave value and grid steps when they are in use); the offers table (rows from the top, a pay frequency and base salary in each used row, a bonus rule and lag with a target, a date with each one-time payment, and at least one offer); the raises; the payout factors and growth rates the comparison uses; the equity grants (ID form and uniqueness, an entered offer, at most five per offer, dates, units, strike and method rules, a share price, and at most 48 vest dates); the vest schedule; the repayment steps; and finally that the benchmark is an entered offer and the chosen offer is a different entered offer. NOT VALID is a refusal, not a numeric answer: every figure is withheld.
• CHECK accompanies a computed result that needs the stated review: no salary from $0 to $10,000,000 makes the chosen offer match the benchmark, so none is reported; the solve and the grid need at least two offers; some scenario cells have no value, each showing its reason; or some vesting fell before the start date and was excluded.
• OK otherwise.

The warnings list, under the results, reports units left unvested at the end or forfeited at departure, equity not yet sellable, options out of the money, bonuses forfeited, repayments due, a retirement cap that binds, the simplified after-tax basis, premiums counted in value, and a final bonus paid after the end. A warning does not change the status.

Assumptions and limitations

• Prices, growth rates and payout factors are your assumptions, not market forecasts. Options are valued at their intrinsic value only, with no time value, no early-exercise choice and no rule for incentive stock options or the alternative minimum tax.
• The simplified after-tax view applies two flat rates. It is not a tax return calculation, has no withholding, brackets, payroll taxes or state rules, and leaves employer retirement and HSA money untaxed.
• Employer retirement contributions are treated as fully vested, and the plan year is the offer year for the cap. The HSA deposit is spread evenly over the pay periods.
• Pay is dated at the end of each pay period. Semimonthly halves are the 1st to the 15th and the 16th to the month end, and biweekly periods start on the start date.
• The explicit vest schedule holds 240 rows shared by all explicit-dates grants, up to 48 per grant. Cliff-then-periodic grants are unaffected.
• The salary solve stops at the first salary within $1 of the target, so the reported salary can differ from the exact match by up to $1 divided by the value each extra salary dollar adds.
• The grid's axes are shifts added to your own growth and payout paths, so the centre is always your base case.
• Cents are rounded half away from zero, including negative amounts.
• Paid time off and its optional value are shown on their own lines and never change pay or the comparable value.

Restrictions and non-computing states

The calculator enforces its numeric and choice limits before it accepts a result. A gap between rows, a missing required column in a used row, a grant without a share price, explicit fractions that do not total 100%, or a repeated grant date is refused by the workbook. The salary solve and scenario grid are left blank in the Calculate mode, and with only one offer.

Errors and warnings

A request rejected by the page's input limits is not a computed result. A transport or service failure, a timeout or a cancelled run cannot establish a fresh workbook answer, and the last result stays on the page marked as out of date. Review the workbook's References and Disclaimer, and your actual offer letters and plan documents, before using a result for a real decision.

Sources and further reading

Every amount, date, rate and assumption on this page comes from your inputs; the calculator holds no statutory or market data. The public sources below explain how the kinds of pay it compares are treated. They describe the rules behind the lanes the model keeps apart; they do not endorse this calculator.

• IRS Publication 525 (2025), Taxable and Nontaxable Income, "Employee Compensation", explains that salary, bonuses and similar pay are wages, how restricted property such as stock that vests over time becomes income, and how nonstatutory stock options are treated (retrieved 2026-10-26).
• IRS Topic 427, Stock options explains that most nonstatutory options are not taxed when granted and that income arises at exercise as the stock's value less the price paid, the spread the calculator reports as intrinsic value (retrieved 2026-10-26).
• IRS Publication 15-B (2026), Employer's Tax Guide to Fringe Benefits, "Accident and Health Benefits", explains that employer-paid health coverage is generally excluded from wages, which is why the calculator shows it as coverage funding rather than cash (retrieved 2026-10-26).
• IRS Publication 969 (2025), Health Savings Accounts and Other Tax-Favored Health Plans states that contributions made by your employer to a health savings account are not included in your income (retrieved 2026-10-26).
• IRS Retirement topics: Vesting explains that employer contributions to a retirement plan can vest on a schedule; the calculator treats them as fully vested, so check your plan's schedule (retrieved 2026-10-26).
• U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Employer Costs for Employee Compensation measures what employers spend on pay and on each kind of benefit, and the share each makes up of total compensation (retrieved 2026-10-26).

This is an educational comparison, not financial, investment, tax or legal advice. Offer terms, equity plans, benefit plans and tax rules differ; check them against your actual offer letters and plan documents and a qualified professional.