Counteroffer Calculator

You hand in your resignation. Your manager's eyes widen, and within a day you have a counteroffer: a $15,000 raise to stay. The new job offered $20,000 more, so the counter doesn't fully match it, but staying means no new commute, no new coworkers, no proving yourself from scratch. So which one actually wins?

Most people decide this on feeling. The math tells a sharper story. Start with the obvious gap: the new role pays $20,000 more, the counteroffer pays $15,000 more, so on base alone you're leaving $5,000 a year on the table by staying. But base is only the first line. The new offer might carry a $25,000 equity grant, a 10% bonus, and a 401(k) match your current job doesn't offer. The counteroffer is just a base bump on the same old package. Once you add equity, bonus, and match, a $15,000 counter can trail a $20,000 offer by $30,000 or more in total value.

Then there's the cost of the move itself, which cuts the other way. A new job may mean a longer commute (gas and time have a dollar value), a higher cost-of-living city, or a benefits gap during the transition. If the new role is in a state with income tax and your current one isn't, that $20,000 raise shrinks in take-home terms. A real comparison nets these out instead of pretending the headline numbers are the whole picture.

The calculator above puts your current job, the new offer, and the counteroffer in the same three columns, base, total comp, and adjusted-for-costs, so you stop comparing one number to another number and start comparing complete packages.