The time desk
Free Online Overtime Calculator
Enter the hours you worked each day and see exactly how the week splits into regular and overtime hours — with editable daily and weekly thresholds and your overtime pay.
The rules
What this overtime calculator is actually doing
Overtime is not one rule. It is up to two rules applied in a fixed order, and that order is the whole reason an overtime calculator beats a spreadsheet column: find the daily premium first, then test what is left against the weekly threshold.
- Daily overtime. For each day on its own, anything above the daily threshold (8 hours by default) becomes overtime for that day.
- Weekly overtime. Add up only the hours that were not already paid as daily overtime. If that figure exceeds the weekly threshold (40 by default), the excess becomes weekly overtime.
- Regular hours. Whatever remains after both premiums are carved out.
Step 2 is the part people get wrong, and it has a name: non-duplication. An hour that has already earned a premium because it was the ninth hour of a day does not earn a second premium for also being the forty-first hour of the week. You pay it once at the higher rate, not twice.
In formula form, with D as the daily threshold and W as the weekly:
daily OT = Σ max(0, hoursₗ − D) for each day d
weekly OT = max(0, (total hours − daily OT) − W)
regular = total hours − daily OT − weekly OT
Under federal law alone the daily line is switched off entirely. The FLSA requires overtime at 1.5× the regular rate for hours worked over 40 in a workweek, and it does not require any premium for a long single day — a 14-hour Tuesday followed by three days off is a 14-hour week with no overtime at all federally. Daily thresholds come from state law, union agreements or employer policy, which is why the daily rule here is a checkbox you can clear rather than a fixed assumption.
Worked examples
Non-duplication, shown three ways
1. Five 10-hour days: 50 hours, but only 10 are overtime
Mon–Fri 10:00 each, daily threshold 8, weekly threshold 40.
Daily OT = 5 × (10 − 8) = 10 h
Remaining hours = 50 − 10 = 40 h → 40 is not above 40 → weekly OT = 0
Result: 40 h regular + 10 h overtime
This is the case that exposes the double-count. Applied naively you would say "10 hours of daily overtime, plus 10 hours over the weekly 40, so 20 hours of overtime" — which would pay the same ten hours twice and turn a 50-hour week into 60 hours of pay. Non-duplication is what keeps the total honest: the week contains 50 hours and the breakdown must add back to 50.
2. Six 7.5-hour days: no long day, but 5 hours of overtime
Mon–Sat 7:30 each → 45:00 total.
Daily OT = 0 (no day exceeds 8)
Remaining = 45 − 0 = 45 → 45 − 40 = 5 h weekly OT
Result: 40 h regular + 5 h overtime
The mirror image of the first example. Nothing about any single day looks unusual, and the premium still arises, because the weekly threshold does not care how the hours were distributed. Spreading a long week over six short days reduces daily overtime to nothing but does not escape the weekly rule.
3. A mixed week where both rules bite
Mon 11:00, Tue 9:00, Wed 8:00, Thu 8:00, Fri 10:00, Sat 6:00, Sun off → 52:00 total.
Daily OT = 3 + 1 + 0 + 0 + 2 + 0 = 6 h
Remaining = 52 − 6 = 46 → 46 − 40 = 6 h weekly OT
Result: 40 h regular + 12 h overtime (52 h total)
Six hours came from long days and six more from the sheer length of the week, and no hour sits in both buckets. At $22.00 an hour with a 1.5× multiplier that is 40 × 22.00 = $880.00 regular plus 12 × 33.00 = $396.00 overtime, or $1,276.00 gross.
Sanity check any overtime split in one second: regular + overtime must equal total hours worked. If your breakdown adds to more than the hours on the clock, something has been counted twice.
Settings
What the thresholds change
The same 50-hour week produces very different splits depending on which rules you switch on. This is worth seeing in one table, because it explains most of the disagreements between a worker's expectation and a payslip.
| Rules applied | Regular | Overtime | Typical setting |
|---|---|---|---|
| Weekly 40 only | 40.00 | 10.00 | Federal FLSA baseline |
| Daily 8 + weekly 40 | 40.00 | 10.00 | States with a daily rule |
| Daily 8 only | 40.00 | 10.00 | Policy-only daily premium |
| Daily 12 + weekly 40 | 40.00 | 10.00 | Long-shift schedules |
| Weekly 44 only | 44.00 | 6.00 | Some non-US thresholds |
| No rules applied | 50.00 | 0.00 | Exempt or flat-rate work |
The first four rows landing on the same answer is not a coincidence — it is non-duplication doing its job. When a week is evenly distributed, the daily and weekly rules tend to catch the same hours, so adding a daily threshold changes nothing. It is the uneven weeks, like example 3, where the daily rule finds hours the weekly rule would have missed.
Thresholds vary, and not just by country
Forty hours a week at 1.5× is the federal US floor, measured over a fixed, regularly recurring 168-hour period that your employer defines — it need not start on Monday or align with your pay period. A minority of states impose a daily overtime threshold on top, California being the best known, and some add a seventh-consecutive-day rule. Set the two fields above to what actually applies to you rather than trusting the defaults, and if you do not know, ask payroll before assuming.
Avoid these
Five things that make an overtime figure wrong
Counting the same hour twice
The error this whole page is built around. Add the regular and overtime columns; if they exceed the hours actually worked, you have double-counted.
Confusing the regular rate with the base hourly rate
Under the FLSA, overtime is 1.5× the regular rate of pay, which can be higher than the posted hourly rate once certain nondiscretionary payments — shift differentials, production bonuses, some commissions — are folded in. The rate box above takes whatever number you give it, so if your pay includes those elements, the gross figure here is a floor rather than the final word.
Counting paid leave as hours worked
Holiday pay, vacation, and sick leave are generally not hours worked for federal overtime purposes. A week of 32 worked hours plus 8 hours of holiday pay is 40 paid hours but only 32 worked hours, so a ninth worked hour on Saturday would not trigger the federal premium. Employer policy can be more generous; the law sets the minimum, not the maximum.
Averaging two weeks together
Each workweek stands alone for FLSA purposes. A 48-hour week followed by a 32-hour week is 8 hours of overtime plus a short week — not two tidy 40-hour weeks. Biweekly pay periods do not change that.
Starting from a sloppy hours figure
Overtime arithmetic is only as good as the hours it receives. Deduct unpaid breaks before entering a day, keep overnight shifts on the right day, and total in whole minutes rather than rounded decimals. The time card calculator and timesheet calculator produce figures in exactly that condition, and how to calculate hours worked covers the groundwork.
Under the hood
Entering your week and reading the breakdown
Each day accepts either form: type 8.5 or 8:30 and both are read as eight and a half hours. Blank days count as zero rather than as an error, so a four-day week needs no special handling. Everything is converted to whole minutes on entry and the thresholds are applied to those integers, so decimal hours in the output are produced once at the end and rounded to two places — the day-by-day Worked, Regular and Overtime columns will always reconcile to the weekly totals exactly.
The breakdown table is the part worth reading closely. It shows which specific days generated daily overtime, the detail that settles most payroll disputes: a worker looking at 12 overtime hours on a 52-hour week can trace 3 of them to Monday and 2 to Friday instead of taking the total on faith.
Every calculation runs client-side in your browser — no network request, no account, nothing stored. The formulas, including the non-duplication rule, are covered by 50 automated unit tests that run on every change to the code. What the tool cannot do is tell you whether you are classified as exempt or non-exempt, which thresholds your state imposes, or how your employer defines its workweek. This is arithmetic, not legal or payroll advice; for the rules themselves, start with overtime rules explained and then confirm with your own HR department or the relevant labor agency.
Frequently asked questions
Common questions
How do you calculate overtime pay?
Split the week into regular and overtime hours, then pay each at its own rate. Federal US law requires 1.5 times the regular rate for hours worked beyond 40 in a workweek. For a 48-hour week at $20 an hour: 40 × $20 = $800 regular, plus 8 × $30 = $240 overtime, giving $1,040 gross.
If a daily threshold also applies, find the daily overtime first, then test only the remaining hours against the weekly threshold so no hour earns a premium twice. The calculator above runs that order automatically and shows the split day by day.
If I work five 10-hour days, how much overtime is that?
Ten hours of overtime, not twenty. Each 10-hour day produces 2 hours of daily overtime, so 10 hours in total. The remaining 40 hours are regular, and because 40 does not exceed the weekly 40-hour threshold, no additional weekly overtime arises.
This is the non-duplication rule: an hour already paid as daily overtime is not counted again toward the weekly threshold. The quick sanity check is that regular plus overtime must equal the hours actually worked — 40 + 10 = 50, which matches the week.
What is the non-duplication rule for overtime?
It is the principle that the same hour cannot earn an overtime premium twice. Hours already counted as daily overtime are excluded when you test the week against the weekly threshold.
Without it, a 50-hour week made of five 10-hour days would appear to contain 10 hours of daily overtime plus 10 hours over the weekly 40, implying 20 premium hours in a 50-hour week. Applying non-duplication, you subtract the 10 daily overtime hours first, leaving 40 hours to test against the 40-hour threshold, which produces no further overtime.
Can I get weekly overtime if no single day was over 8 hours?
Yes. The weekly threshold is independent of how the hours were distributed. Six days of 7.5 hours is 45 hours with no day over 8, so there is zero daily overtime — but 45 hours still exceeds 40, producing 5 hours of weekly overtime.
Spreading a long week across more, shorter days avoids daily premiums but does not avoid the weekly one. It is the reverse of the five 10-hour days case, where all the premium comes from the daily rule and none from the weekly rule.
Is overtime after 8 hours a day required by law?
Not under federal US law. The FLSA requires 1.5 times the regular rate only for hours worked over 40 in a workweek and imposes no daily overtime requirement, so a 14-hour day followed by three days off is a short week with no federal overtime.
Daily thresholds come from state law, union agreements or employer policy. A minority of states impose one, California being the best known, and some add rules for consecutive days worked. Set the daily threshold on this page to whatever actually applies to you, or clear its checkbox to switch it off.
How many hours is time and a half?
Time and a half is a pay rate, not a number of hours: it means 1.5 times your regular rate for each qualifying hour. At $18 an hour, each overtime hour pays $27.
The hours that qualify depend on your thresholds. Federally it is every hour worked beyond 40 in the workweek. Some employers and some states also pay the premium beyond a daily threshold. The multiplier field above defaults to 1.5 but accepts other values, so you can model a double-time policy by entering 2 instead.
Does holiday or vacation pay count toward overtime?
Generally not for federal overtime purposes. The FLSA counts hours actually worked, so paid leave, holidays and sick time usually do not push you over the 40-hour threshold.
A week of 32 worked hours plus 8 hours of holiday pay is 40 paid hours but only 32 worked hours, so an extra worked hour on Saturday would not trigger the federal premium. Employers may be more generous by policy or contract, and some jurisdictions differ, so enter only hours actually worked here and check your own handbook.
Is overtime calculated on my hourly rate or something else?
Under the FLSA it is based on the regular rate of pay, which can be higher than your posted hourly rate. Certain nondiscretionary payments — shift differentials, production or attendance bonuses, some commissions — have to be folded into the rate before the multiplier is applied.
The rate box on this page takes whatever figure you enter, so if your pay includes those elements the gross total shown is a floor rather than the final answer. Ask payroll how your regular rate is computed if bonuses or differentials are a regular part of your earnings.
Can my employer average two weeks together to avoid overtime?
Not under the FLSA. Each workweek stands alone, so a 48-hour week followed by a 32-hour week contains 8 hours of overtime plus a short week — it is not two 40-hour weeks.
A biweekly pay period does not change that; it only changes when the money arrives. The workweek itself is a fixed, regularly recurring period of 168 hours that your employer defines, and it does not have to begin on Monday or line up with the pay period. Calculate each week separately on this page.
How should I enter hours into the overtime calculator?
Type each day as decimal hours such as 8.5 or as h:mm such as 8:30 — both are accepted and read identically. Leave a day blank if you did not work; blanks count as zero.
Enter hours actually worked, with unpaid breaks already deducted, and keep an overnight shift on the day it started if that is how your employer records it. Everything is converted to whole minutes internally, so the day-by-day Worked, Regular and Overtime columns always reconcile exactly to the weekly totals. The result is arithmetic, not legal or payroll advice.
Read next
Guides that explain the numbers
Last reviewed 1 November 2026 by the Hours Calculator Online team. Spotted a problem? Tell us and we will fix it.