Free tool · Realistely
True Hourly Rate Calculator
Find out what an hour of your working life is actually worth — after the unpaid time and the costs the job quietly hands back to you.
What you actually earn per hour.
Fill in what you know, leave the rest blank. It updates as you type — the numbers below are an example, replace them with yours.
Your true hourly rate
—per hour
Enter your income to see the number.
Where the hours went
- Paid hours—
- Unpaid overtime—
- Commute—
- Prep & decompression—
- Total per year—
Where the money went
- Income per year—
- Work costs per year—
- What's left—
- Unpaid hours per year—
The arithmetic runs on whatever you put in. Nothing here is a judgement about your job.
Runs entirely in your browser. Nothing you type is sent anywhere, saved, or seen by us.
Next, the bigger number
You just priced an hour. Now price the house.
The same arithmetic decides whether a home is affordable — and almost every mortgage calculator gets it wrong, because it divides a gross salary that you never actually see. Real Estate, Made Readable is 73 pages that walk through the real numbers: what a mortgage actually costs, which fees appear at closing, and how to read a contract before you sign the biggest cheque of your life.
Divide your salary by forty hours and you get a number that feels like the truth. It isn't. It's the rate your contract describes, not the rate your life pays. The hours you actually give to the job include the overtime nobody logs, the commute that exists only because the job exists, and the twenty minutes at each end of the day spent getting into and back out of work mode. The money you actually keep is what's left after the transit pass, the lunches you didn't want to buy, the clothes you'd never otherwise own and the childcare covering the hours you're away. Put all of it into one fraction and the number usually falls by a third. This calculator does that division for you.
The hours
What counts as unpaid time
The test is simple: would this hour exist if the job didn't? If the answer is no, it belongs in the total.
- Overtime you don't invoice. The forty-five minutes after everyone logs off, the Sunday evening inbox pass, the deck finished at home. Estimate the weekly average rather than the worst week.
- Commuting. Door to desk and back. Count the walk to the station and the wait, not just the train. If you're hybrid, put in the days you actually travel — three, not five.
- Prep and decompression. Showering and dressing for a standard you'd otherwise ignore, packing lunch, the drive home spent still replaying the meeting. Remote workers often have almost none of the first and plenty of the last.
- On-call and travel. Time you can't leave the house, and airport hours nobody pays for.
Two things stay out. Skip anything you'd do regardless — you'd eat lunch either way, and you'd probably shower on a Sunday. And skip time you're genuinely paid for, like a lunch break inside a paid shift; that's already in the paid column.
The money
The costs people forget
Salary is a gross number. What reaches you is smaller, and part of what reaches you goes straight back into being able to do the job at all. Transit passes, fuel and parking are the obvious ones. Then: the sandwich bought because there was no time to pack one, the wardrobe that only exists for the office, childcare hours bought to cover the working day, the phone plan and home internet upgraded for work, tools and software you pay for yourself, professional dues and licences.
Add them up monthly and be unsentimental. Most people land somewhere between a modest transit pass and a childcare bill that rivals rent, and the difference between those two situations is the whole story of what a job is worth to them. Taxes are deliberately left out here so the comparison stays clean — if you'd rather see the after-tax picture, enter your take-home pay instead of your gross and the arithmetic still works.
A twelve percent raise that comes with a ninety-minute daily commute and five unpaid hours a week is usually a pay cut. The offer letter will never tell you that. The arithmetic will.
Property
Four housing decisions this number changes
Your true hourly rate isn't only a career number. It sits underneath most of the big property decisions people make badly, because those decisions are almost always priced in money alone and never in hours.
What you can actually borrow against
Mortgage affordability tools run on gross salary. Yours already has the work costs stripped out, which is closer to the money genuinely available for a housing payment.
Whether the cheaper suburb is cheaper
A house forty minutes further out might save you a large sum on the purchase price. Multiply the extra commute by your true rate across the years you'd live there, and compare the two figures directly.
Do it yourself, or pay someone
DIY looks free because your labour isn't invoiced. Price the weekend at your true rate against the contractor's quote and the honest answer often flips.
Self-manage or hire a manager
Property management typically runs eight to twelve percent of rent. Estimate your monthly hours on tenants, repairs and paperwork, price them, and see which side wins.
Careers
Using the number to compare two jobs
This is where a true hourly rate earns its keep. A gross salary comparison flattens two offers into a single figure and hides everything that differs underneath. A smaller number with no commute and a hard stop at six often beats a bigger one that eats your evenings.
Run each job through separately and write down both true rates. Then look at the total-hours line as well as the rate, because two jobs can pay the same per hour while one takes six hundred more hours of your year. If you're weighing a fully remote role, remember what disappears: commute, most of the prep, most of the wardrobe, most of the bought lunches. That's the part of the offer nobody puts in writing.
Freelancers can use the same fraction, and probably should. Divide a year of income by every hour spent — pitching, scoping, invoicing, chasing payment, admin, the unbillable calls — and you get the rate that actually funds your life, which is what a day rate should be built backwards from.
One last thing: a lower true rate is not a verdict. Plenty of work is worth doing at a rate that looks poor on paper. The point of the number is that you get to make that trade knowingly instead of by accident.
Questions
Answered plainly
What is a true hourly rate?
It's your income after work-related costs, divided by every hour the job takes — paid hours plus unpaid overtime, commuting and daily prep. The assumed rate only divides by contracted hours, which is why it's almost always the higher of the two.
Should I count my commute as working time?
For this calculation, yes. The commute exists only because the job exists, so it's time the job costs you. Some people prefer to count it at half weight because they read or listen to something they'd enjoy anyway. If that's you, enter half the minutes — the arithmetic is yours to set.
What if I work from home?
Leave the commute at zero and be honest about the rest. Remote work usually removes travel and most of the getting-ready time, but it often adds unpaid overtime, because the laptop never really closes. Home internet, electricity and equipment you bought yourself belong in the monthly costs.
How does this help with buying a home?
Mortgage affordability calculators divide your gross salary, which counts money you never see and ignores what the job itself costs you to do. The figure this tool produces is closer to what's genuinely available, and it lets you price a longer commute or a renovation weekend in hours rather than guessing.
Does this work for freelancers and self-employed people?
Yes, and it's often more revealing. Enter your total income for the year, then count every hour spent on the business, not just billable ones. Software, subscriptions, accounting and insurance go in the monthly costs, and any weeks you take with no income go in unpaid weeks off.
Is my data stored anywhere?
No. The calculator runs entirely in your browser. Nothing you type is transmitted, logged or saved, and refreshing the page clears it.
From Realistely
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See inside →This tool performs arithmetic on figures you supply. It is general information, not financial, tax, legal or career advice. Taxes and deductions are not modelled. Real estate rules vary by location and change over time — for decisions that matter, confirm specifics with a licensed professional.