Job Offer Comparison Calculator

Meet Priya. She has two offers on the table and a deadline on Friday. Offer A pays a base salary of $105,000. Offer B pays $95,000. Her instinct, like almost everyone's, is that the $10,000 gap makes Offer A the obvious winner. Then she did the math that turns a salary into a real comparison.

Offer A's $105,000 comes with a 3% 401(k) match ($3,150), a health plan that costs her $280 a month in premiums, no bonus, and a 40-minute commute. Offer B's $95,000 comes with a 6% 401(k) match ($5,700), a fully employer-paid health plan, a 10% target bonus ($9,500), and it's remote.

Here's where the headline falls apart. Offer B's bonus alone nearly closes the salary gap. The richer match adds another $2,550 a year. The free health plan saves her $3,360 annually versus Offer A's premiums. Stack it up:

• Offer A total comp: 105,000 +3,150 match − $3,360 premiums = about $104,790.
• Offer B total comp: 95,000 +5,700 match + 9,500 bonus +0 premiums = about $110,200.

Offer B is worth roughly $5,400 more per year, before you even count the eliminated commute and the value of remote flexibility. The "lower" offer was the higher-paying one all along.

This is the trap of comparing offers by base salary: salary is only one line in a compensation package that includes bonus, equity, retirement match, health premiums, PTO, and a dozen other levers that move thousands of dollars. This calculator puts two or three offers side by side and totals every component into one apples-to-apples number. Instead of guessing whether a bigger match makes up for a smaller salary, you see the real figure for each offer and pick with your eyes open.