What is one hour of your life worth?
Enter what you earn and how much you work. We turn it into the value of a single hour — then you can read any price tag as time instead of money.
$60,000.00/yr · 40 hrs/wk · 52 wks (example)
Your hour = $28.85
That coffee costs 11 minutes of your life.
Pre-tax. Swap in your own income and your own price to try it.
How it works
The whole tool is one division. Your annual income divided by the hours you work in a year gives the value of one hour. Hours per year is simply hours per week × weeks per year — the example inputs of 40 hours and 52 weeks come to 2,080 hours.
Once one hour has a price, every purchase has a duration: price ÷ hourly value × 60 gives minutes. We show minutes under an hour, hours up to one working day, and working days beyond that — because "5.2 workdays" lands very differently than "$1,199.00".
A working day here means your own working day, not a fixed eight hours. If you tell the calculator you work 60 hours a week, it treats a working day as 12 hours, and the same purchase costs fewer working days than it would for someone on 40.
What this number includes — and what it doesn't
It includes exactly what you type: gross income, and the hours you say you work. That is the whole model, and it is why the result is easy to trust — there is no hidden assumption to discover later.
It does not include tax, pension or insurance contributions, or any benefit deducted before your salary reaches you. We could have printed an "estimated after-tax" figure, but there is no single correct one: two people on identical salaries can take home very different amounts. Printing a number we cannot stand behind would make the tool feel more precise while making it less true. If you want the after-tax view, type your take-home pay into the income field.
It also does not include unpaid work — commuting, being on call, or the evening you spent thinking about a work problem. Every hour you add that you are not paid for pushes the value of your hour down.
Why the 52 weeks matter
52 weeks assumes you work every week of the year, including the ones you spend on holiday. That makes the calculation conservative: your salary is spread across the largest plausible number of hours, so each hour looks as cheap as it possibly can.
Drop the field to the weeks you actually work and the value of your hour rises. Someone earning $60,000.00 across 52 weeks is worth $28.85 an hour; the same person counting 46 worked weeks is worth $32.61. Neither figure is a trick — they answer slightly different questions, so the field is yours to set.
What a share link does not carry
Most calculators put your inputs in the URL so a friend can see the same result. Here the input is your salary, so we do the opposite: the link carries the result — one number, the converted time — and nothing else.
Your income, your hourly value and the price you typed never appear in the link, in the share card, or in our analytics. Neither does the item. The example prices on this page are published, so "coffee" plus a duration would be enough to work backwards to your rate — which is why the item is left out for the same reason the amount is. The share card says "that purchase" and never names anything, and analytics receive only a coarse time bucket.
With no amount and no item travelling with it, a duration on its own cannot be divided back into your hourly rate. The one way anyone learns it is if you tell them the price yourself.
Everyday prices, in hours of your life
At the example income of $60,000.00 a year (40 hours a week, 52 weeks) — one hour is worth $28.85. These prices are illustrations, not averages.
| Purchase | Example price | Costs you |
|---|---|---|
| coffee | $5.50 | 11 minutes |
| takeout meal | $22.00 | 46 minutes |
| monthly subscription | $17.99 | 37 minutes |
| flagship phone | $1,199.00 | 5.2 workdays |
Frequently asked questions
- How is my hourly value calculated?
- Annual income divided by (hours per week × weeks per year). With the example figures — $60,000.00 a year, 40 hours a week, 52 weeks — that is 2,080 hours a year, so one hour is worth about $28.85. Any price is then converted with: price ÷ hourly value × 60 = minutes.
- Is this before or after tax?
- Before tax. We deliberately do not estimate your take-home pay. Deductions depend on your country, filing status, pension and insurance contributions, and pre-tax benefits, so any single "after-tax" number we printed would be wrong for most people. If you want an after-tax view, enter your actual take-home pay as the income figure — the math works exactly the same way.
- Why does it assume 52 weeks a year?
- Because 52 weeks is the simplest starting point, and it is the conservative one: it counts your paid time off as time worked, which spreads your salary over more hours and makes each hour look cheaper. If you enter only the weeks you actually work — say 46 — your hourly value goes up. You can change the field; it is not fixed.
- Does my income get shared or stored when I share a result?
- No. The share link carries exactly one thing: the converted time. Your income, your hourly value and the price you typed are never put in the URL, never sent to the server and never printed on the image — and neither is which item you priced, because the example prices are published on this page and knowing the item would let someone pair it with the time. That is why the share card always says "that purchase" rather than naming anything. With no amount and no item attached, a duration on its own cannot be divided back into your hourly rate. The one remaining way anyone learns it is if you tell them the price yourself.
- Are the example prices real averages?
- No — they are illustrations to get you started, not market research. A coffee, a takeout meal, a monthly subscription, and a flagship phone are there because they span very different time scales. Replace any of them with the exact amount you are actually thinking about; that is the intended way to use this.