Two offers, different cities. Here's the real number.

Two job offers with the same salary can have wildly different real value once you account for taxes, benefits, cost of living, and commute. A $120,000 offer in a no-income-tax state with strong benefits and a short commute can be worth meaningfully more, in actual take-home and quality of life, than a $130,000 offer in a high-tax city with a weak 401k match and an hour-long commute each way. Comparing base salary alone treats two genuinely different financial situations as if they were identical.

This matters most when offers come from different cities or company sizes, since that's exactly when the gaps in taxes, cost of living, and benefits tend to be largest — and exactly when a salary-only comparison is most likely to point you toward the wrong choice.

The same nominal salary buys very different amounts of actual purchasing power depending on local housing costs, taxes, and general prices. A salary that looks like a raise on paper can represent a real pay cut in purchasing power if it comes with a move to a significantly more expensive city. This calculator lets you apply a cost-of-living adjustment between two locations so the comparison reflects what you can actually afford to buy and save, not just the number on the offer letter.

A strong 401k match, fully covered health insurance, and generous PTO have real dollar value, even though they're easy to overlook next to a salary figure that's stated explicitly. A 6% 401k match on a $100,000 salary is $6,000 a year in free money — equivalent to a meaningful raise — and a health plan that costs you $50 a month versus one that costs $400 a month is a $4,200 annual difference hiding inside two offers that might otherwise look similar.

Equity compensation deserves particular skepticism rather than face-value trust. Offer letters often state equity value at a generous valuation that may not reflect what it's actually realistically worth, especially at early-stage companies. This calculator lets you apply your own discount to equity value based on how confident you are in the company's prospects, rather than taking the stated number at face value.

Commute cost is two things, not one: the direct dollar cost of gas, transit fare, or parking, and the time cost of hours spent commuting that aren't being spent on anything else. An hour each way, five days a week, is roughly 250 hours a year — over six full work weeks — and that time has a real value to you even though no employer pays you for it. This calculator lets you assign your own value to that time so the comparison reflects what commute differences actually cost you, not just what they cost in gas money.