Biweekly Paycheque Calculator Canada: Take-Home Pay After Tax

A biweekly paycheque is your annual salary divided by 26, the number of paydays in a year when you are paid every second week. Enter your salary and province below to see each paycheque before and after income tax, CPP and EI. You can also switch to weekly, semi-monthly or monthly pay.

The calculator works out a full year’s federal and provincial income tax, CPP or QPP contributions and EI premiums (plus QPIP in Quebec) on your salary, using the same rates as the salary after tax calculator, and divides them evenly over your paycheques. It counts the basic personal amount, the Canada employment amount and the credits for CPP and EI, but not RRSP contributions, union dues, group benefits or other deductions your employer takes. Actual payroll withholding follows the CRA’s per-period formulas and the TD1 forms you filed, and CPP and EI stop once their yearly maximums are reached, so individual cheques can be a little higher or lower than the average shown.

Pay per paycheque at each pay frequency

How often you are paid changes the size of each cheque, not the year’s total.

Biweekly and semi-monthly pay are easy to confuse: both arrive about twice a month, but semi-monthly pay comes on fixed dates 24 times a year, while biweekly pay comes every 14 days, 26 times. The semi-monthly paycheque page covers that difference, including what changes when an employer switches from one to the other.

Weekly pay

Weekly pay means 52 paycheques in most years (53 in some), each the annual salary divided by 52 (or, for hourly work, the rate times the week’s hours). It is more common for hourly work in construction and the trades, retail, food service, agriculture and some small businesses, while salaried jobs are more often paid biweekly or semi-monthly. For hourly pay, the hourly to salary calculator converts a rate into weekly, biweekly and yearly amounts.

Months with three paycheques

Paid every second week, you usually get 26 paycheques in a year. Ten months bring two of them and two months bring three: twelve months of two make 24, and the remaining two paydays each fall into a month that already has two. Which months they are depends on your payday and the date your employer’s cycle started, so the paydays on your last few pay stubs are the way to find them. Once in a while the calendar lines up so that a year holds 27 biweekly paydays.

The two three-paycheque months matter for budgeting, because monthly bills don’t change while income does. Budgeting on a biweekly paycheque covers ways to plan around them.

What comes off each paycheque

Income tax, CPP contributions and EI premiums are normally deducted from each paycheque, along with any optional deductions such as group benefits, pension contributions or union dues. CPP and EI stop for the rest of the year once you reach that year’s maximum contribution, so take-home pay can rise late in the year for higher earners. The payroll deductions guide explains each deduction, the CPP and EI rates and maximums, and the employer’s share, and how to read a pay stub walks through the lines on a statement. If one cheque looks different from the last, see why a paycheque can change from one week to the next.

Take-home pay per paycheque: an illustration

The figures below take a full year’s income tax, CPP and EI on a salary and spread them evenly over 26 paycheques. Actual payroll withholding follows the CRA’s per-period formulas and the TD1 forms you filed, and CPP and EI stop once their yearly maximums are reached, so individual cheques will differ.

For other salaries and provinces, use the calculator at the top of this page.

Related calculators

• Hourly to salary calculator: convert between hourly, weekly, biweekly, monthly and annual pay
• Semi-monthly paycheque calculator
• Salary vs. hourly pay
• All income calculators