How it works

paidwell compares the base salary you enter against pay for the same occupation in the same metropolitan area. Results are estimates; here’s how they’re made.

Where the numbers come from

• Pay for everyone in a role and city: BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025. These cover employees across employers in each metropolitan area. Very high wages are top-coded by the source, so the highest ranges may be understated.
• Pay at your experience level, and employers that pay more: US Dept. of Labor H-1B LCA disclosures, FY2025. These are wages employers certified in filings, grouped by the filing’s wage level (we map years of experience to these levels). They reflect offered base pay, not bonuses or equity, and over-represent some employers and industries.
• Contributions: anonymous salaries shared on paidwell. These are added to statistics once a role and city have enough entries, and implausible entries are excluded.

Paid report extras

• Take-home pay: estimated for a single filer with the standard deduction, using 2026 IRS federal brackets, Social Security and Medicare rates, and 2026 state brackets compiled by the Tax Foundation. Local taxes, retirement contributions, and benefits are not included.
• Cost of living: U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis Regional Price Parities by metro area, overall and for housing.
• Housing: median home value and median gross rent from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (1-year estimates), and the weekly 30-year fixed mortgage rate from Freddie Mac (via the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis).
• Inflation and job growth: national consumer prices (CPI-U) from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the same occupational wage survey from earlier years.
• The cost of not asking: illustrative only; assumes steady yearly raises and a long-run investment return, before taxes and inflation.

How your percentile is calculated

We estimate where your salary falls between known points in the pay distribution (for example the 25th, 50th, and 75th percentiles), interpolating in between. Outside the published range, results are approximate.

Limitations

• Base salary only. Bonuses, equity, and benefits can change the picture a lot.
• Job titles vary; we group them into standard occupations, which may not match your exact role.
• Data lags the market by months, so fast-moving fields may be understated.

Company names are shown as they appear in public records or contributions, and don’t imply affiliation or endorsement.