Overtime Pay Calculator

Most overtime calculators have the workflow backwards. They ask you to type your regular hours, your overtime hours, and your double-time hours as three separate numbers, then they multiply. But if you already knew how many of your hours counted as overtime, you would not need the calculator. Splitting the hours is the hard part, the piece the law actually governs, and it is what those tools hand right back to you.

This one does the splitting. Pick your rule, type your hours the way you actually track them, and it sorts every hour into regular, time-and-a-half, and double-time, then prices the whole paycheck. Federal mode takes one number, your weekly total. California mode takes your hours day by day and applies the daily rules that trip people up. It is free, runs in your browser, and nothing you type ever leaves your device.

A quick example on the federal side. You worked 50 hours at 20 dollars an hour. Type 50. The tool keeps the first 40 as regular pay (800 dollars) and pays the remaining 10 at time-and-a-half (300 dollars), for 1,100 gross. You never had to know that 40 was the line, or do the 1.5 math in your head.

1. Pick your overtime rule. Federal (40 hours a week) fits most hourly workers in the US. California (daily) adds the 8-hour and 12-hour daily rules some states use. Manual split lets you set the three buckets yourself, for a contract or state rule the presets do not cover.
2. Enter your hourly rate. This is your base pay per hour. It is the only field the calculator truly needs to show a number.
3. Set the overtime multiplier if yours differs. It defaults to 1.5 (time-and-a-half). Some union contracts pay 1.75 or a flat premium, so change it if that is your deal. The box will not go below 1.5, because federal law makes one and a half times the regular rate a floor rather than a suggestion, so a contract can beat it and nothing can undercut it.
4. Enter your hours. In Federal mode that is one number, your total for the week. In California mode it is a box per day, Monday through Sunday. In Manual mode it is the three buckets directly.
5. Read the breakdown. You get a plain sentence explaining how the hours were sorted, then regular pay, overtime pay, double-time pay when there is any, and a bold total gross at the bottom. Everything updates the instant you change a field.

Left a box blank? It counts as zero instead of throwing a broken number, so you can clear a field and retype without the whole thing falling apart. The Share button copies a link that reopens the exact rule, rate, and hours you are looking at.

The federal rulebook is the Fair Labor Standards Act, and its overtime rule is short. Covered, non-exempt employees get at least 1.5 times their regular rate for every hour worked past 40 in a single workweek. No federal daily rule, so a 14-hour Tuesday does not trigger overtime on its own, and no federal double-time at all. Federal mode only needs your weekly total, draws the line at 40, and prices the rest at your multiplier.

The 1.5 is a minimum and not a target, which is why this page lets the multiplier go up and refuses to let it go down. Two things about that 40 catch people out. It is per workweek, a fixed seven-day stretch your employer defines, not per pay period, so 45 hours one week and 35 the next still owes you 5 hours of overtime for the first week. And it counts hours actually worked, not hours paid, so a paid holiday does not push you toward the 40, since you did not actually work those hours.

Here is where a plain 40-hour calculator quietly shortchanges you. California, and a handful of other states, layer a daily overtime rule on top of the weekly one. California mode builds all of it in:

• Over 8 hours in a workday pays 1.5x.
• Over 12 hours in a workday pays 2x (double-time).
• On the seventh consecutive day worked in a week, the first 8 hours pay 1.5x and anything past 8 pays 2x.
• The weekly 40 still applies, but only to your straight-time hours, so an hour is never counted as overtime twice.

That last rule is the one even payroll departments botch. Type a single 13-hour California shift into the day grid and watch it split: 8 hours regular, 4 hours at time-and-a-half (hours 9 through 12), and 1 hour at double-time (hour 13), all inside one day, regardless of your weekly total. Nobody should have to do that sort in their head, and most free tools will not do it for you.

A few other states run a daily rule, and they do not all draw the line where California does, so the preset is only a fair starting point for the ones that share the 8-hour breakpoint:

• Alaska pays 1.5x past 8 hours in a day, which is the California breakpoint without the 12-hour double-time step.
• Nevada pays 1.5x past 8 hours in any 24-hour period, and it applies to workers under a wage threshold rather than to everybody.
• Colorado draws its line at 12 hours in a day, or 12 consecutive hours across a shift that straddles midnight, so the California preset would hand a Colorado worker overtime from hour 9 that Colorado's own rule does not owe them.

The rule everywhere is the same: you get whichever standard, state or federal, pays you more. When your state has a wrinkle the presets miss, switch to Manual mode and enter the buckets your state's labor department spells out.

The rate you type is treated as your regular rate, which is right for straight hourly pay. But the law folds most non-discretionary bonuses, shift differentials, and commissions into that regular rate. So if you earned a production or attendance bonus in a week you worked overtime, your true overtime rate sits a little above your posted wage, because the bonus counts before the 1.5x applies. Employers who run overtime off the bare wage while paying bonuses are underpaying, one of the more common violations the Department of Labor pursues. If that is you, enter your blended figure as the rate for a precise number.

These are gross figures too, before tax. Overtime is taxed like the rest of your wages, there is no separate overtime tax, though a heavy week can make payroll briefly over-withhold and even out later.