Compare Take-Home Pay Two salaries or scenarios, side by side

Gross salary is the wrong number to compare offers on, and net salary by itself is only slightly better. Two jobs with identical gross pay can leave you thousands apart once the terms around the salary are counted.

What changes your net pay for the same gross

Your filing status matters most: a married couple on one income has a €53,000 standard rate band against €44,000 for a single person, so the same salary is taxed differently. Age matters too, because PRSI stops for employees aged 70 and over, and for those aged 66 to 69 who hold the State Pension (Contributory). A medical card holder with income under €60,000 pays USC at reduced rates. Any pension contribution you make lowers the income tax due but not the USC or PRSI. Setting these correctly in the calculator above is what makes a comparison meaningful.

What this calculator cannot price, and you should

The employer pension contribution. This is the one that most often decides an offer, and it never shows up in a net pay comparison. An extra €5,000 of gross salary on top of €60,000 is worth about €2,638 in your hand, because the marginal rate at that level is roughly 47%. An employer paying 5% of a €60,000 salary into your pension is putting €3,000 in instead, untaxed at the point of contribution. On those numbers the lower-paying offer is the better one.

Benefit in kind. A company car, or health insurance paid on your behalf, is added to your taxable pay rather than handed to you, so it raises your tax bill. Put the BIK value into the calculator to see what it actually does to your net.

Tax-free benefits. Up to €1,500 a year across a maximum of five non-cash benefits can be given free of PAYE, USC and PRSI under the Small Benefit Exemption. To someone on the top marginal rate that is worth roughly €3,100 of gross salary.

Guaranteed versus discretionary pay. Compare base salary against base salary first, then treat bonuses separately according to how likely they are to be paid. A guaranteed 10% is a different thing from a discretionary one, even where the headline package looks identical.

Enter your real cut-off and credits, not just the defaults

The certificate fields under each column let you replace the standard cut-off and credits with the exact figures from your own Tax Credit Certificate or a recent payslip, and they matter most in exactly the situation this page is built for: comparing two offers. A certificate figure can differ from the standard one for plenty of ordinary reasons: an existing second job using part of your credits, a benefit in kind already loaded onto your tax record, or a mid-year change of employer that has not yet been reconciled. If you know your own real cut-off and credits, enter them on both columns rather than just one. Putting your real certificate on Option A while leaving Option B on the standard assumption compares your actual tax position against an assumption for a job you do not have yet, not two comparable scenarios. The one exception is a genuine change the new role itself would cause, for example a new employer meaning your credits reset to standard until Revenue reissues them, in which case that difference belongs in the comparison rather than being hidden from it.

What to hold constant

Change only the variable you are actually testing. Comparing two job offers at the same point in your life means age, filing status and any certificate figures should be identical on both sides, with gross salary, pension and any benefit in kind as the only things that differ, otherwise the "which offer wins" answer is really answering a different question. The quick-compare presets above show the two legitimate reasons to vary anything else: testing a pension contribution against none at the same salary, or testing how a genuine change in filing status, such as getting married, moves the same salary's take-home. Outside a real difference like that, holding everything but the figure you are testing constant is what keeps the comparison honest. If instead of two known salaries you are asking what gross a pension-heavy offer would need to match a cash-only one, that is the reverse question: use the net to gross calculator to work out the gross figure that would be required.

Figures are 2026 rates, calculated with the engine behind this page. Sources: Revenue, tax rates and bands and Revenue, Small Benefit Exemption.