Pay and salary · rules read October 11, 2026
Biweekly paycheck calculator
Enter the hours of each of the two weeks and your rate, or a yearly salary; the calculator returns the gross amount of the check.
Written by Radif Partners · How the hours are counted · Editorial policy
Gross biweekly paycheck
$2,000.00
before taxes and deductions
| Regular pay | $2,000.00 |
| Overtime at 1.5x | $0.00 |
| Year at this check × 26 | $52,000 |
| Monthly average | $4,333 |
Overtime is owed per workweek: 50 hours then 30 hours is 10 overtime hours, not zero, even though the two weeks total 80. How this is calculated.
A biweekly paycheck covers two workweeks, and its gross amount is the pay for each week added together, never the two weeks pooled. For an hourly worker at $20, two even weeks of 40 hours pay $1,600.00. If the same 80 hours are split 50 and 30, the first week contains 10 overtime hours at time and a half and the check rises to $1,700.00, because the FLSA measures overtime in each fixed workweek and does not allow averaging. A salaried employee's biweekly gross is usually the annual salary divided by 26: $65,000 becomes $2,500.00 a check. The calendar complicates that count. 2026 has 53 Thursdays and 52 of every other weekday, so a schedule paying every other Thursday from January 1 lands on 27 dates, and a Friday schedule from January 2 pays 27 checks once the New Year's Day payday of 2027 moves back to December 31. Employers who keep the same check in a 27-pay year pay $2,500 more than the salary.
How many biweekly paychecks in 2026?
Paydays in 2026
26
| Last payday | 2026-12-18 |
| Months with three checks | 2 |
Two workweeks inside one paycheck
Payroll groups time into pay periods; the overtime law groups it into workweeks. Fact Sheet #23 defines a workweek as a fixed, recurring period of 168 hours, seven consecutive days chosen by the employer, and states that each one stands alone. A biweekly period is therefore two separate overtime calculations printed on one check. The calculator above asks for the days of week one and week two in separate rows for exactly that reason.
Take a warehouse associate at $20 an hour who covers for a colleague. Week one: five 10-hour shifts, 50 hours, of which 40 are straight time and 10 are overtime, paid $1,100.00. Week two: five 6-hour shifts, 30 hours, paid $600.00. The check is $1,700.00. An employer who averaged the period would print $1,600.00 and keep $100.00 that belongs to the worker. In California, Alaska, Nevada or Colorado, long single days can create overtime even inside a short week; the two-week timesheet applies those daily rules day by day.
| Week 1 | Week 2 | Pay period | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hours worked | 50 | 30 | 80 |
| Straight time | 40 | 30 | 70 |
| Overtime at 1.5x | 10 | 0 | 10 |
| Gross pay | $1,100.00 | $600.00 | $1,700.00 |
Counting the paydays of 2026
Fifty-two weeks make 26 biweekly periods, but a calendar year is 52 weeks and a day, and the leftover days add up until one year holds a 27th payday. In 2026 the extra day is a Thursday: 53 Thursdays against 52 Fridays. The payday you start from decides the outcome, and so does the habit of moving a payday that falls on a holiday to the previous business day. The table below counts both for four common January starting points.
| First scheduled payday | Dates on the cycle in 2026 | Checks issued in 2026 | Last check of 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Thursday, January 1 | 27 | 26 | December 31, 2026 |
| Friday, January 2 | 26 | 27 | December 31, 2026 |
| Thursday, January 8 | 26 | 26 | December 24, 2026 |
| Friday, January 9 | 26 | 26 | December 24, 2026 |
The Thursday, January 1 cycle shows why the two columns differ. Its first date is New Year's Day, so that check goes out on December 31, 2025, and the year ends with 26 checks dated in 2026 even though 27 dates sit on the cycle. The Friday, January 2 cycle runs the other way: its 27th date is January 1, 2027, which moves back into December 2026. The biweekly pay schedule lists every date, and the pay periods page compares weekly, semimonthly and monthly counts.
Salaried checks in a 27-pay year
For hourly staff a 27th check is simply two more weeks of hours. For salaried staff it raises a budgeting question. Dividing $65,000 by 26 gives $2,500.00; paying that 27 times costs the employer an extra $2,500.00 in the calendar year. Some employers simply accept it as a quirk of the calendar. Others switch to dividing by 27 for that year, $2,407.41 a check, which keeps the yearly cost flat but trims every check by $92.59. Fixed monthly bills paid from a smaller check are the practical effect to plan for. The figures here are gross; withholding is calculated per check, so the net effect of a 27-pay year depends on your own W-4. The salary to hourly converter shows the hourly value of either check.