Hours Worked Calculator.

Add your shifts, breaks, and travel time to see your total hours worked and pay earned. Handles overtime, paid breaks, and day rates.

✓ Free ⏱ For employees & contractors

Hours Worked Calculator

How many hours did you work?

Entry mode

Your shifts

Overtime threshold

Overtime multiplier

Pay rate (optional)

Leave blank to calculate hours only.

Each shift earns one flat day rate. Overtime hours are paid at your day rate ÷ 8h × the overtime multiplier.

Helpful tips

⏱

Log breaks accurately

Paid and unpaid breaks affect your total hours and pay differently. A paid break keeps the clock running. An unpaid one does not. Small differences compound across a week.

🚗

Travel time can count as work

In many countries, travel to a non-fixed workplace counts toward working time and may trigger overtime. Check your contract. If in doubt, log it and let your employer make the call.

📋

Keep your own records

Do not rely solely on your employer's timesheets. Keeping a personal log of start times, end times, and breaks gives you evidence if a pay dispute ever arises.

💰

Know your overtime threshold

Overtime rules vary widely: daily over 8h, weekly over 40h, or a different figure in your contract. Using the wrong threshold could mean you are owed more than you think.

How hours worked calculation works

The hours behind the pay
you actually take home

Most people have a rough sense of how long their working week is. Fewer know their precise hours once breaks, travel, and shift patterns are properly accounted for. That gap matters, because pay is calculated on exact figures and small daily discrepancies compound into meaningful underpayment across a month or a year.

The most commonly missed variable is the difference between paid and unpaid breaks. An unpaid break reduces both your hours and your pay. A paid break does not. Travel time adds a further layer: in many roles and jurisdictions, travel to a non-fixed workplace counts toward working time and can push you over an overtime threshold even on an otherwise ordinary shift.

This calculator works through all of it shift by shift. The result is your verified total hours and gross pay, with overtime applied correctly so you can compare it directly against your payslip and spot any discrepancy before it becomes a dispute.

Hours worked end − start − unpaid break

Overtime hours over threshold × multiplier

Total pay regular pay + overtime pay

FAQ

Common questions

For pay purposes, yes. A paid break means your employer continues paying your normal rate during that time, so it does not reduce your gross earnings for the shift. For overtime purposes, however, some contracts and jurisdictions exclude paid breaks from the hours-worked total when calculating whether you have crossed a threshold. The practical difference is small in most cases, but it matters at the margins. If you are regularly just above or below an overtime threshold, check your contract. When in doubt, use this calculator with the paid break toggle on and off to see exactly how much it affects your result.

It depends on where you are travelling to. Commuting to your regular fixed workplace does not count as working time in most countries. Travel to a client site, a temporary location, or anywhere other than your usual place of work generally does. In the UK and across the EU, this distinction is broadly covered under Working Time Regulations and has been tested in case law. In the US, the rules under the Fair Labor Standards Act are similar in principle. If your employer routinely sends you to different locations, that travel time very likely qualifies and should be included when calculating whether you have hit an overtime threshold.

Your contract is the primary reference. If it is not stated explicitly, the legal default varies by country: the US federal standard under the FLSA is 40 hours per week, the EU Working Time Directive sets a 48-hour weekly maximum, and many industries or collective agreements use daily thresholds instead, typically over 8 or 10 hours in a single day. Daily thresholds are more protective for shift workers who might not reach 40 hours in a week but still work very long individual days. Weekly thresholds suit more regular patterns. If your contract is ambiguous, the daily over 8 hours setting is a reasonable conservative choice.

Time and a half means every overtime hour is paid at 1.5 times your normal rate. If your regular rate is £20 per hour, each overtime hour pays £30. The multiplier applies only to hours beyond the threshold, not to your whole shift. If you work 9 hours against a daily 8-hour threshold, one hour is paid at the overtime rate and the remaining eight are paid at your standard rate. Double time follows the same logic at a 2x multiplier. This calculator applies the correct split per shift, so you can see exactly how much of each day's pay comes from regular versus overtime hours.

A day rate covers a standard working day, assumed to be 8 hours. When you work beyond that, the extra hours are paid as an overtime top-up on top of the flat rate. To calculate this, the calculator converts your day rate to an implied hourly rate by dividing it by 8, then multiplies any overtime hours by that figure and your overtime multiplier. So if your day rate is £240 and you work 10 hours at 1.5x overtime, the implied hourly rate is £30 and the 2 overtime hours add £90, bringing the day total to £330. This is the standard approach for contracted day-rate workers in most industries.

Start by identifying whether the gap is in recorded hours or in the rate applied. The most common causes are breaks being deducted when they should be paid, travel time excluded when it should count, the wrong overtime threshold applied, or rounding used against you. Build your own record first: start times, end times, and break durations for each shift in question, then compare these against what your employer has logged. If there is a genuine shortfall, raise it in writing with your manager or HR. In the UK, ACAS offers free advice and the Employment Tribunal is available if informal resolution fails. In the US, the Department of Labor handles wage and hour complaints.