PTO Calculator

Your Accrual Reservoir

Common PTO Policies

One-click presets covering typical US tenure bands and federal OPM leave schedules.

Annual PTO → Accrual per Paycheck

Want to value those hours? See the Salary to Hourly Calculator to price a PTO payout.

The Formula

US Vacation by Tenure (BLS averages)

Source: US Bureau of Labor Statistics, National Compensation Survey.

No saved balances yet. Tap "Save to History" to remember up to six reservoir snapshots.

How to Fill the Reservoir

1. Enter your annual PTO hours from your offer letter or handbook — 80 hours is the common 10-day starter policy.
2. Pick your pay frequency so the per-check accrual matches your payroll exactly.
3. Slide pay-periods-worked to how far you are into the accrual year; the reservoir rises as it climbs.
4. Enter hours already used and your workday length to see the net balance and days off available.
5. Save the snapshot before booking a trip, and watch the amber cap line so you never forfeit earned time.

Why This Calculator Exists

In 2026, a software engineer three months into a new job wants to book a week in Lisbon and needs to know whether enough vacation has actually accrued yet to cover it. The PTO Calculator answers that by modeling the slow fill of a vacation reservoir: every pay period a fixed number of hours drips in, the tank rises, and the calculator reports both the current balance in hours and how many full days off that buys. Watching the reservoir fill makes an abstract HR-system number feel like real, spendable time.

PTO — paid time off — is the umbrella term that has largely replaced separate vacation and sick buckets in US employers since the mid-2000s. Unlike statutory leave in much of Europe, the United States has no federal law requiring paid vacation; the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 governs minimum wage and overtime but is silent on paid leave. PTO is therefore a contractual benefit, and the single most common way employers grant it is accrual: you earn a slice of your annual allotment with each paycheck rather than receiving it all on January 1.

The core arithmetic is a two-step division and multiplication. First, the accrual rate per pay period equals the annual PTO hours divided by the number of pay periods in the year. With the most common US cycle — biweekly, 26 paychecks — a standard 80-hour (10-day) policy accrues 80 ÷ 26 = 3.08 hours per paycheck. Second, the balance equals the accrual rate times the number of periods you have worked, minus any hours you have already taken. The reservoir gauge renders that balance against your annual ceiling.

Pay frequency changes the per-check number even when the annual total is identical. The same 120-hour (15-day) policy accrues 2.31 hours per weekly check (120 ÷ 52), 4.62 hours per biweekly check (120 ÷ 26), 5.00 hours per semimonthly check (120 ÷ 24), or 10.00 hours per monthly check (120 ÷ 12). The annual destination is the same; only the size of each drip into the reservoir differs. This calculator lets you switch frequency to match exactly what your payroll system does.

Caps and carryover are the two policy wrinkles that trip people up. Many employers set a maximum accrual ceiling — often 1.5 to 2 times the annual rate — beyond which you stop earning until you use some time, a structure colloquially called 'use it or lose it' when carryover is disallowed. California is a notable exception: state law treats earned vacation as wages that cannot be forfeited, though employers may still impose a reasonable cap. The reservoir gauge visualizes the ceiling so you can see when you are approaching a cap and risk leaving earned time on the table.

Converting hours to days requires knowing your standard workday. Most full-time US schedules assume 8 hours, so 80 PTO hours is 10 days and 160 hours is 20 days. Part-time and compressed schedules differ: a worker on four 10-hour days has a 10-hour 'day,' so the same 80 hours is only 8 of their days. This tool divides by a configurable workday length so the day count matches your real schedule rather than a generic eight.

PTO accrual is closely tied to the broader payroll cadence covered by our Salary to Hourly and Hourly to Salary calculators, because the value of an accrued hour is your hourly rate, and a day of unused PTO is real money on the books — the US Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates paid leave at roughly 7 percent of total compensation costs for private-industry workers. Knowing your exact balance lets you plan trips, negotiate payouts at separation, and avoid forfeiting time you have genuinely earned.