Pay Period Calculator

How to use this pay period calculator

1. Enter any payday you are sure about — last Friday's check date works as well as a future one.
2. Choose the pay frequency your employer uses: weekly, bi-weekly, semi-monthly (15th and last day of the month), or monthly.
3. Set how many paydays to project. Twelve covers about three months of weekly pay, six months of bi-weekly pay, or a full year of monthly pay.
4. Read each row as: the pay period runs from the start date through the end date, and the check arrives on the payday.

One modeling note: the table shows each pay period ending on the payday itself. Many employers pay in arrears — the period actually closes several days before the check date so payroll has time to process timesheets. If yours does, the payday cadence in the table is still exactly right; just slide the start and end dates back by your employer's processing lag (commonly 3 to 7 days).

How many pay periods are in a year?

The headline numbers are 52 weekly, 26 bi-weekly, 24 semi-monthly, and 12 monthly pay periods per year. Semi-monthly and monthly counts are exact every year, because they are defined by the calendar: two paydays per month is always 24, one per month is always 12.

Weekly and bi-weekly counts are only usually 52 and 26. A common year has 365 days, which is 52 weeks plus one extra day; a leap year has two extra days. Those leftover days accumulate, so the paydays slowly drift earlier relative to the calendar. Every so often the drift squeezes an extra check date into a single calendar year: a 53rd weekly payday, or a 27th bi-weekly payday. Whether a given year has the extra payday depends entirely on where the first payday of the year lands — on a bi-weekly schedule, a year whose first payday falls on January 1 or 2 will fit 27 paydays. The calculator works this out from your anchor date automatically, so you never need a lookup table.

Bi-weekly vs. semi-monthly: 26 checks or 24

These two schedules are easy to confuse because both pay "twice a month-ish," but they behave differently in almost every way that matters:

• Bi-weekly pays every 14 days on the same weekday — every other Friday, for example. You get 26 checks a year, each covering exactly 80 scheduled hours for a full-time employee. Because the period is always two whole workweeks, overtime (which federal law defines per workweek — see the federal overtime basics guide) lines up cleanly with the paycheck.
• Semi-monthly pays on two fixed calendar dates, most commonly the 15th and the last day of the month. You get exactly 24 checks a year, but the periods are uneven — 13 to 16 days long — and the payday weekday changes every time. Hourly overtime is messier because a workweek can straddle two pay periods.

The most noticeable practical difference is the three-paycheck month. Since 26 checks don't divide evenly into 12 months, a bi-weekly schedule produces two months every year that contain three paydays instead of two. Budgeters often treat those two "extra" checks as found money for savings or debt payoff, because monthly bills are usually planned around the normal two. Semi-monthly earners never get one — and in exchange, their checks are each slightly larger: the same annual salary divided by 24 instead of 26, about 8.3% more per check.

How the math works

Weekly and bi-weekly schedules are pure day arithmetic: each payday is the anchor date plus a multiple of 7 or 14 days, and each period is the 7 or 14 days ending on the payday. Semi-monthly paydays are calendar-defined — the 15th covers the 1st through the 15th, and the last day of the month covers the 16th through month-end — so the calculator simply walks forward month by month from the first 15th-or-last-day on or after your anchor. Monthly paydays repeat your anchor's day of the month; when a month is too short (a payday on the 31st meeting a 30-day month, or February), the date is clamped to that month's final day, which is what most payroll systems do.

Worked example

Suppose your employer pays bi-weekly and you know a check landed on Friday, June 12, 2026. Adding 14 days at a time gives the next paydays: June 26, July 10, July 24, August 7, August 21, September 4, September 18, October 2, October 16, and October 30. Each period is the 14 days ending on the payday, so the July 10 check covers June 27 through July 10.

Notice October: it contains three paydays (the 2nd, 16th, and 30th) — one of the two three-paycheck months this schedule produces over the following year. If the same employee earns a $52,000 salary, each bi-weekly check is $52,000 ÷ 26 = $2,000 gross, so October brings in $6,000 gross instead of the usual $4,000. On a semi-monthly schedule the same salary would pay $52,000 ÷ 24 = $2,166.67 per check, always twice a month, with no triple months.

Pay frequency comparison

Hours per period assume a 40-hour week and 2,080 scheduled hours a year — the standard full-time figure you can break down further with the work hours in a year calculator. To go the other direction, from a salary to an hourly rate, use the salary to hourly calculator.

Weekend and holiday paydays

A scheduled payday will regularly land on a Saturday, Sunday, or bank holiday — semi-monthly schedules are especially prone to it because the 15th and the last day fall on every weekday over time. Most employers move those paydays to the previous business day, a few to the next one, and direct-deposit timing adds its own wrinkle. Because the adjustment is a company policy rather than a rule of arithmetic, the calculator marks weekend paydays with a dagger (†) but does not move them. Check your employee handbook or a recent pay stub to see which way your employer shifts.

Frequently asked questions