Biweekly Pay Calculator
Convert your annual salary into biweekly pay and see how it compares to semi-monthly pay. Enter your salary and hours to get a full breakdown of your earnings across every pay period.
Biweekly pay means you get paid every two weeks, resulting in 26 paychecks per year. This is the most common pay frequency in the United States, used by about 36% of employers according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The key thing to understand is that biweekly is not the same as semi-monthly. Semi-monthly employees get paid on fixed dates (like the 1st and 15th) for 24 paychecks per year. On a $65,000 salary, biweekly pay is $2,500.00 per check while semi-monthly is $2,708.33. The biweekly check is $208.33 smaller, but you get two extra paychecks per year.
Those two extra paychecks are a budgeting opportunity. Most months you receive two biweekly paychecks, but two months per year you get three. Many people use the third paycheck as a forced savings mechanism, directing the extra check straight to savings, debt payoff, or investments. Over a career, this simple habit can add up to hundreds of thousands of dollars in wealth.