These two pay schedules get mixed up constantly, and the difference actually matters for budgeting. Biweekly means every two weeks — 26 paychecks a year — which is what this calculator computes. Semi-monthly means twice a month — 24 paychecks a year, usually on fixed dates like the 15th and last day of the month. On the calculator's own default of $28/hour, 40 hours/week: a biweekly paycheck is $2,240.00, while the same annual pay split semi-monthly would be $2,426.67 per check — $186.67 more per paycheck, but two fewer paychecks across the year, so the annual total is identical. Mixing the two up is a common source of budgeting errors, especially in months where a biweekly schedule happens to produce three paychecks instead of two.
The default assumes 52 working weeks a year, which is true for most salaried pay but not necessarily for hourly work with unpaid time off. Keeping the same $28/hour and 40-hour week, but lowering the weeks actually worked:
| Weeks worked per year | Annual gross |
|---|---|
| 52 (no unpaid time off) | $58,240.00 |
| 50 (2 unpaid weeks) | $56,000.00 |
| 48 (4 unpaid weeks) | $53,760.00 |
Two unpaid weeks off — a fairly common amount of time away between holidays, illness, and any gap between jobs — is already a $2,240 difference on this example, even though the hourly rate never changed. If you're hourly rather than salaried, using your realistic weeks-actually-worked instead of a flat 52 gives a much more accurate annual figure than the hourly rate alone suggests.
All figures shown are gross (before tax and other deductions) — this tool doesn't estimate take-home pay.
It's your weekly pay divided by the number of 8-hour workdays implied by your entered hours per week.
Use your average hours per week for the most representative estimate — the further your actual schedule varies, the less precise this projection will be.