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Free HR tools · Salary hike calculator

Salary Hike Calculator

Enter the figures you have. The answer updates as you type.

What do you want to work out?

Your annual CTC, or the annual figure you want to compare against.

The offer, or the revised figure on your letter.

What is a salary hike

A salary hike is the increase between what you earn now and what you will earn next, written as a percentage of what you earn now.

The percentage is what people compare, because the rupee amount on its own says nothing without the salary underneath it. A ₹60,000 rise on ₹6,00,000 is a 10% hike. The same ₹60,000 on ₹20,00,000 is 3%. Same money, very different news.

It goes by a few names depending on who is writing. An increment is usually the annual one your employer decides. A hike is the everyday word for any of them. A revision is what the letter says. They all mean the same sum, and this page works it out the same way whichever word you were given.

The working

How a Salary Hike Is Worked Out

Three steps, and the whole of it is one subtraction and one division. You can check the calculator against it on paper.

  1. 01

    Take the difference

    New salary less current salary. That is the rise in rupees, and it is the only figure most letters actually give you.

  2. 02

    Divide by the current salary

    Not by the new one. The hike is measured against what you earn today, which is what makes the same rise a bigger percentage on a smaller salary.

  3. 03

    Multiply by a hundred

    That turns the fraction into the percentage everybody quotes. Round it at the end, not in the middle.

The Six Kinds of Salary Hike

They are decided in different rooms, on different grounds, and they are not comparable with each other. Knowing which one you are being offered tells you more than the percentage does.

The annual increment

The yearly review everybody gets, set from a budget agreed before anyone looked at your work. Your rating moves you within that budget rather than past it.

The promotion hike

Paid because the job changed, not because the year passed. It is usually the largest one you will get without leaving, and it is the one worth asking for by name.

The switch

What another company pays to move you. Larger than an increment more often than not, because they are paying to solve a problem today rather than to keep you next year.

The counter or retention offer

Made when you have already resigned. It closes the money gap and nothing else, which is why it works less often than the people making it expect.

The market correction

Paid when a role has drifted below what the market pays for it, usually after a benchmarking exercise. It arrives outside the appraisal cycle and it is about the job, not the person in it.

The cost of living adjustment

Applied across a grade or the whole company to hold pay level against prices. Nobody is being rewarded, so it is the one kind you should not read as a verdict on your work.

The Formula, Both Ways Round

The calculator above runs whichever of these you need. They are the same relationship rearranged, so an answer from one checks against the other.

  • Hike percentage

    (New salary − Current salary) ÷ Current salary × 100

    Use this when you have an offer and want to know what it is worth as a percentage.

  • New salary

    Current salary × (1 + Hike % ÷ 100)

    Use this when you have been promised a percentage and want the figure it lands on.

Before you sign

A Percentage on Its Own Can Mislead You

The number in the letter is arithmetic on CTC. What lands in your account depends on what the CTC is made of, and those are not the same question.

What people compare

  • The headline percentage, and nothing else
  • CTC against CTC, with the parts ignored
  • A joining bonus counted as if it were salary
  • Variable pay counted at 100% before it is earned
  • The gross rise, with no allowance for tax

What is worth comparing

  • The fixed part of the CTC, which is what you can count on
  • Take-home a month, after tax and deductions
  • What has to happen for the variable part to be paid in full
  • One-off payments kept out of the percentage entirely
  • What the employer puts into PF and gratuity
  • The cost of getting there, if the office is further away

Frequently
Asked Questions

What people ask when an offer or an increment letter lands.

Still have questions?

Talk to the team and we will walk you through it.

Talk to our team

Subtract your current salary from the new one, divide the result by your current salary, and multiply by 100. On a move from ₹6,00,000 to ₹7,20,000 the difference is ₹1,20,000, divided by ₹6,00,000 gives 0.20, and that is a 20% hike. Divide by the current salary rather than the new one; dividing by the new figure is the commonest mistake and it always gives you a smaller, wrong answer.

Multiply your current salary by one plus the percentage divided by 100. A 15% hike on ₹8,00,000 is ₹8,00,000 × 1.15, which is ₹9,20,000. Switch the calculator above to "Find new salary" and it does the same sum.

Either, as long as both figures are on the same basis. The percentage comes out the same whether you compare two monthly figures or two annual ones. The fields here are labelled annual because that is how CTC is usually written in India, and because the answer then shows the monthly increase without you having to divide it yourself.

No, and the gap can be wide. CTC includes things that never reach your account: the employer's PF contribution, gratuity, insurance premiums and any variable pay that depends on performance. A 20% CTC hike that is mostly variable and employer contributions can be a much smaller rise in what you actually take home each month. Compare the fixed part, and compare monthly take-home after tax.

It depends on which kind of hike it is, and comparing across kinds is not useful. An annual increment comes out of a budget set before anyone looked at your work. A promotion is paid because the job changed. A switch is what another company will pay to move you. This page does not quote an industry average, because that figure moves every year and by sector, and a number without its survey attached is not worth planning around. Judge the offer against your own fixed pay, your own costs and what the role asks of you.

Yes. Put the lower figure in as the new salary and the answer comes back negative, with a line saying so. It is worth checking you have not simply entered the two figures the wrong way round, which is what a negative answer usually means.

In everyday use they are the same thing. "Increment" usually means the annual one your employer decides, "revision" is what the letter tends to call it, and "hike" is the ordinary word for any increase. The arithmetic does not change with the word.

Usually yes, and sometimes at a higher rate on the part above a slab boundary, but only that part. Crossing into a higher slab never leaves you with less than you had before. If part of your new pay is house rent allowance and you pay rent, work out the exemption as well; there is a calculator for that on this site.

Run Increments Without the Spreadsheet

Niyuk holds the salary history, the revision letters and the approvals in one place, so an appraisal cycle does not become a month of version control.

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