One calculator, three different rulebooks
Hourly pay looks like it should be simple arithmetic, and within one country it mostly is. Across countries it isn't, because the things that surround the hourly rate — paid holiday, overtime premiums, mandatory contributions — are built on completely different foundations. A calculator that ignores this will hand you a confident number that happens to be wrong.
The clearest example is paid holiday. In the United Kingdom every hour you work earns you a fraction of paid leave. In the United States federal law requires no paid holiday at all. Those two facts produce meaningfully different annual figures from the same hourly rate, which is why this page asks for your region before it asks for anything else.
United States — no holiday floor, but overtime bites
There is no federal requirement to provide paid vacation, paid holidays, or paid sick leave to private-sector workers. Paid time off exists widely, but as a benefit employers choose to offer rather than a statutory floor. What federal law does require is overtime: hours beyond 40 in a workweek must be paid at one and a half times the regular rate for covered non-exempt employees.
The minimum wage is layered. The federal floor has sat at $7.25 since 2009, and twenty states still use exactly that. Thirty states and the District of Columbia set their own higher rates — Washington State at $17.13, Connecticut $16.94, California $16.90, with DC highest at $17.95 — and most of them adjust on 1 January. New York even splits internally, with a higher rate for New York City, Long Island and Westchester than for the rest of the state. Whichever rate is highest is the one that applies to you.
On deductions, FICA is not a flat 7.65%. Social Security takes 6.2% but only up to the $184,500 wage base, so it stops entirely above that. Medicare takes 1.45% with no cap, and an Additional Medicare 0.9% applies to wages over $200,000. Overtime counts as wages for all three. Federal and state income tax sit on top and depend on your filing status and withholding choices, so this calculator leaves them out rather than guessing.
United Kingdom — the 12.07% rule
Every worker is entitled to 5.6 weeks of paid holiday a year. For people on fixed hours that's simply booked as leave, but for irregular-hours and zero-hours workers it's converted into an accrual rate. Take 5.6 weeks of holiday out of a 52-week year and 46.4 working weeks remain; 5.6 divided by 46.4 gives 12.07%. Each hour worked therefore earns 12.07% of an hour of paid holiday — 68 hours in a month accrues roughly 8.2 hours of leave.
The minimum wage is banded by age rather than being a single number. From April 2026 the National Living Wage for workers 21 and over is £12.71, those aged 18 to 20 get £10.85, and under-18s £8.00. Deductions come through PAYE: employee National Insurance plus income tax, both calculated against annual thresholds rather than as flat percentages, which is why the take-home figure here is an estimate rather than a payslip.
European Union — a floor, then wide variation
EU law guarantees at least four weeks of paid annual leave, and most member states go beyond it. Beyond that shared floor the picture fragments quickly. Minimum wages range from about €1,381 a month in Spain to €2,391 in Ireland, with Germany at €13.90 per hour since January 2026 — roughly €2,409 a month at full-time hours — and France, the Netherlands and others sitting in between. Six member states have no statutory minimum wage at all and rely on collective agreements instead.
Social contributions vary even more than wages do, which is why this calculator asks you to enter your own rate for the EU rather than pretending one number fits. Germany's combined employee contributions land around 20%, while other member states differ substantially in both rate and structure. Your payslip or national tax authority is the reliable source.
What this calculator assumes
- Monthly figures = weekly pay × 52 ÷ 12 · Annual = weekly × 52
- US: overtime hours paid at 1.5× · Social Security 6.2% up to the $184,500 wage base, Medicare 1.45% uncapped, Additional Medicare 0.9% over $200,000 · income tax excluded
- UK: holiday accrual 12.07% of hours worked (5.6 ÷ 46.4) · estimated employee NI and basic-rate tax against standard thresholds
- EU: paid leave entered as weeks and spread across the year · deductions entered manually
- Minimum wages as of 2026: US federal $7.25 plus state rates, UK from April 2026, EU per Eurostat January 2026
This is a general estimate, not payroll or legal advice. Rates change on different schedules in each jurisdiction and individual circumstances vary — check your payslip, contract, or national authority before relying on these numbers.