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Hourly Wage Calculator 2026

Convert your monthly salary into an hourly rate — or the other way round. And see what remains as a real hourly rate once holiday, public holidays and unpaid overtime are taken into account.

100% freeNo data storedMinimum wage 2026: €13.90

Contractual and real hourly pay are two different numbers

The contractual hourly rate divides your gross monthly salary by the agreed monthly hours. The real hourly rate counts only the hours you genuinely spend working — holiday and public holidays raise it, unpaid overtime pushes it down. This calculator shows both. Results are non-binding estimates and replace neither a payslip nor legal or tax advice.

Pay & working time

€
h
days

Actual working time

days
days

Statutory minimum on a five-day week: 20 working days (§ 3 BUrlG). Typical contracts offer 25 to 30 days.

Nine public holidays apply nationwide; depending on the federal state and the weekday, some are added or fall away.

h

Additional payments

€
Your gross hourly rate

€18.41

per hour · 173.8 hrs per month

Contractual hourly rate

€18.41

Gross per month

€3,200

Gross per year

€38,400

Gross per week€736
Daily rate€147.29

Minimum wage check 2026

€3.63

above the statutory minimum wage

Statutory minimum wage 2026

€13.90

Minimum gross monthly pay required

€2,537

Your hourly rate meets the statutory minimum wage. The comparison uses the hourly rate including your unpaid overtime — precisely those hours count towards the minimum wage.

On 1 January 2027 the statutory minimum wage rises to €14.60 per hour.

Real hourly rate

Annual gross including additional payments, divided by the hours you actually work.

Real hourly rate

€20.71

Hourly rate incl. unpaid overtime

€17.53

Difference vs. contractual hourly rate: +€2.30

Hourly rate compared

What your unpaid overtime costs

Unpaid overtime per year

88.3 hrs

Value per year

€1,625

Valued at your contractual hourly rate — that is how much work you effectively give away each year if these hours are neither paid nor compensated with time off.

Working time in detail

Contractual monthly hours173.8 hrs
Contractual annual hours2,085.7 hrs
Hours per working day8.00 hrs
Working days per year (arithmetic)260.7 days
Working days after holiday & public holidays220.7 days
Paid but not worked hours320.0 hrs
Hours actually worked per year1,765.7 hrs
Unpaid overtime per year88.3 hrs
Hours worked incl. overtime1,854.0 hrs

The formula used

Hourly rate = monthly gross ÷ (weekly hours × 4.345)

The factor 4.345 comes from 365 ÷ 7 ÷ 12 = 4.345238 weeks per month. Over a year that is 52.143 weeks.

How this calculator works

  • The basis is the monthly factor 4.345 (52.143 weeks a year divided by twelve months). Some collective agreements use different factors such as 4.33 — the hourly rate then differs marginally.
  • The real hourly rate deducts holiday and public holidays from the working days and adds unpaid overtime. Both are paid for, only one of them is worked.
  • Additional payments such as a 13th salary feed into the real hourly rate but not into the contractual one — they are part of annual pay, not of monthly pay.
  • All figures are gross, before tax and social security contributions. This is a non-binding estimate, not legal or tax advice.

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Guide: hourly pay, minimum wage and working time

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Frequently Asked Questions

Divide your gross monthly salary by your average monthly hours. Those follow from your weekly hours multiplied by the factor 4.345 — that is 365 days divided by 7 days divided by 12 months. At 40 weekly hours this gives 173.8 monthly hours. A gross monthly salary of €3,200 therefore corresponds to an hourly rate of roughly €18.41. The commonly used approximation of 160 hours per month is too low and makes the hourly rate look about eight percent higher than it is.

A year has 365 days and therefore 52.143 weeks. Spread across twelve months that is 4.345 weeks a month. The value 4.33 comes from dividing 52 weeks by 12 and ignores the extra day beyond the full 52 weeks. Some collective agreements and employers nevertheless use 4.33 or fixed monthly hours such as 173 or 174. The difference is around 0.3 percent — about five cents on an hourly rate of €18. Irrelevant for comparing two offers, but it can matter for a borderline minimum wage check.

The contractual hourly rate divides gross monthly pay by the agreed monthly hours — it treats holiday and public holiday hours as if you had worked them. The real hourly rate deducts those days and counts only the hours you genuinely spend working. With 30 holiday days and 10 public holidays that is around 40 of 261 working days fewer, a good 15 percent. Conversely, unpaid overtime pushes the figure back down. Taken together, both effects give a realistic picture of what an hour of work actually earns.

The statutory minimum wage has been €13.90 gross per hour since 1 January 2026. Before that it was €12.82, so the increase is around 8.4 percent. The legal basis is the fifth minimum wage adjustment ordinance of 5 November 2025. In a second step the minimum wage rises to €14.60 on 1 January 2027. On a 40-hour week the 2026 minimum wage corresponds to gross monthly pay of roughly €2,416.

Exempt are, among others, trainees in a recognised vocational training programme, for whom a minimum training allowance applies instead, and people under 18 without completed vocational training. Also exempt are mandatory internships as part of school or university education, orientation internships of up to three months, volunteers, and the long-term unemployed during the first six months of a new job. Mini-jobbers and part-time employees, by contrast, are fully covered.

Since 2022 the mini-job threshold has been dynamically linked to the minimum wage: it equals the minimum wage multiplied by 130 and divided by 3, rounded up to whole euros. With a minimum wage of €13.90 this gives an earnings limit of €603 a month, or €7,236 a year, for 2026. The idea behind it is that a mini-job should allow ten weekly hours at the minimum wage year-round. Anyone earning more moves into the midi-job transition zone.

Yes. The minimum wage applies to every hour actually worked. Anyone regularly working longer without pay arithmetically lowers their hourly rate — and can drop below the minimum wage threshold even though the agreed monthly salary is above it. That is why this calculator explicitly compares the minimum wage with the hourly rate including unpaid extra work. Employers are also obliged to record the working time of certain groups of employees; those records are your most important evidence in a dispute.

The calculator uses the customary conversion factors (52.143 weeks a year, 4.345 weeks a month) and the minimum wage of €13.90 in force since January 2026. All results are gross figures before tax and social security contributions. Deviations arise if your collective agreement prescribes different factors or fixed monthly hours, if you receive shift premiums, allowances or variable pay, or if your working time fluctuates strongly. For converting job offers and for a first minimum wage check the calculation is meaningful; it does not, however, replace a payslip or legal advice.