Nurse Pay Calculator

About this tool

This is a free pay calculator for working nurses — staff RNs evaluating an offer, travel nurses comparing contracts, and staff nurses considering a jump to travel. It's published for Nurses Week (May 6–12) because the existing options online are mostly recruiter funnels or signup walls. The math is the same math your payroll department runs; we just run it openly with sources cited.

How it works

Staff vs Travel

1. Enter your staff hourly rate, state, and shift pattern. Adjust benefits if your numbers differ from the defaults.
2. Enter the travel contract: taxable hourly, weekly stipend, locality, and contract length.
3. The right side shows net pay for both — after federal income tax, FICA, and state income tax — annualized for an apples-to-apples view, and as a contract total so you can see the actual dollars on a 13-week deal.

Overtime

1. Enter your base rate, state, and a typical week's shift pattern.
2. If you're in California, Alaska, Nevada, or Colorado, daily OT and double-time are computed from the shift pattern.
3. Add a shift differential and watch the regular rate (and the OT multipliers built on it) update in real time.

Shift Differential

1. Split your week's hours across day, evening, night, weekend, and holiday buckets.
2. Set the differential for each — by dollars per hour or percent of base — and check whether they stack at your facility.
3. Effective hourly and per-bucket contribution show where the actual money is coming from.

Understanding nurse overtime pay

Federal FLSA sets the floor: hours over 40 per week are paid at 1.5 times the regular rate (29 USC §207(a)). Most states stop there. Four don't.

• California (CA Labor Code §510) is the big one. OT kicks in after 8 hours in a day, double-time after 12, and the 7th consecutive day of work has its own multipliers. A nurse working three 12s in California earns OT every shift even though weekly hours are under 40 — the OT calculator catches this; most generic calculators do not.
• Alaska (AS 23.10.060) — daily OT after 8 hours.
• Nevada (NRS 608.018) — daily OT after 8 hours, but only if your hourly is below 1.5× state minimum wage. Most nurses are above this floor.
• Colorado (COMPS Order 38) — OT after 12 hours in a day.

State law that's more generous to the worker prevails over the federal floor (29 USC §218(a)). The OT calculator applies daily OT first, then layers weekly OT only on hours that aren't already converted — so hours don't double-count.

Differentials matter for OT too. Under FLSA §207(e), a shift differential is part of the "regular rate" — your OT multiplier applies to base + differential, not just base. Recruiters and scheduling systems sometimes get this wrong; the calculator does not.

Staff vs Travel — what the numbers don't show

Travel contracts can look bigger because the stipend isn't taxed. That's real money — within the IRS GSA per diem cap for the locality, weekly stipends are non-taxable. But what the comparison leaves out:

• Benefits. Health insurance ($7,500–$12,000/yr employer share), retirement match, employer-paid disability, and PTO accrual are real compensation. Most travel agencies offer thinner versions or none at all.
• Job security. Travel contracts can be cancelled with limited notice. Staff jobs come with progressive discipline and severance norms.
• Career trajectory. Charge nurse, preceptor, and clinical ladder progression are staff-side opportunities.
• Tax complexity. Multi-state travel means filing in every state you worked. Estimated taxes and quarterly payments. Audit risk if you can't substantiate a "tax home."
• Burnout cost. Variable schedules, no continuity, and constantly being the new RN on the unit — these are real costs the dollar comparison misses.

The annualized vs contract-total view in Mode 3 is intentional: a travel contract that beats staff over 13 weeks may not beat staff over a year if you can't string contracts back-to-back without gaps.

Pay rules and data sources

• FLSA federal overtime (29 USC §207)
• California overtime (CA Labor Code §510)
• IRS GSA Per Diem Rates (FY2026)
• IRS Publication 15-T (federal withholding)

Estimates only. Consult your HR department or a tax professional for exact figures. State income tax is modeled as a single-filer effective rate; your actual bracket may differ. The travel-stipend non-taxable cap reflects published GSA rates and your agency's stipend may be lower or differently structured.