Value your unpaid labor · Compare to paid work · Find opportunities
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Founder & CEO, Toolraxy
Faiq Ur Rahman is a web designer, digital product developer, and founder of Toolraxy, a growing platform of web-based calculators and utility tools. He specializes in building structured, user-friendly tools focused on health, finance, productivity, and everyday problem-solving.
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Value the household and caregiving tasks you do without pay. Enter your country, weekly unpaid hours for cleaning, childcare, meal prep, and more, plus your paid wage. The tool returns weekly and annual replacement value, a paid-work comparison, and outsourcing scenarios. See your result in seconds.
Unpaid work rarely appears on a payslip, but it keeps households running. The Unpaid Work Calculator turns those invisible hours into a clear weekly and annual replacement value. It is built for parents, caregivers, partners, mediators, researchers, and anyone who wants evidence for conversations about household labor. Enter your country, paid hours, wage or salary, and the weekly hours you spend on tasks such as meal preparation, cleaning, laundry, child care, schoolwork, adult care, pet care, transport, repairs, and gardening. The calculator then applies editable outsourcing rates, compares unpaid work with paid work at your own wage, and shows what outsourcing or family sharing could free up. Toolraxy provides this tool as a transparent, client-side resource: your numbers stay in your browser. Use it to recognize the economic weight of caregiving and domestic work, not to replace professional financial or legal advice.
Choose your country from the dropdown. This sets the currency symbol and default outsourcing rates.
Enter your paid work hours per week. The allowed range is 0 to 120.
Select whether you know your hourly wage, weekly salary, or monthly salary.
Type your wage or salary. The equivalent hourly rate appears automatically.
In “My unpaid work,” enter weekly hours for each task you perform. Leave a task at 0 if it does not apply.
Review “Average cost of outsourcing” and adjust any rate to match your local market.
In “My opportunities,” enter how many hours you want to outsource and how many hours family will share.
Click Calculate to refresh the outputs, then use Copy or Share if you want to save the results.
The Unpaid Work Calculator values each unpaid task by multiplying your weekly hours by an editable local outsourcing rate, then sums those task values to produce weekly and annual replacement cost.
Formula: Hourly equivalent = hourly wage (when hourly is selected)
Formula: Hourly equivalent = weekly salary ÷ paid hours per week (when weekly is selected and paid hours > 0)
Formula: Hourly equivalent = (monthly salary × 12 ÷ 52) ÷ paid hours per week (when monthly is selected and paid hours > 0)
Formula: Task rate = round2(base rate × country multiplier)
Formula: Task value = task hours × task rate
Formula: Total unpaid hours = sum of all task hours
Formula: Total unpaid value = sum of all task values
Formula: If I worked = total unpaid hours × hourly equivalent
Formula: Blended rate = total unpaid value ÷ total unpaid hours (when total unpaid hours > 0)
Formula: Cost to outsource = min(outsource hours, total unpaid hours) × blended rate
Formula: Time freed = min(outsource hours + family hours, total unpaid hours)
Formula: Value of freed time = time freed × hourly equivalent
Formula: Net weekly benefit = value of freed time − cost to outsource
Formula: Annual value = total unpaid value × 52
The calculator validates inputs with minimum values of 0 and uses step increments of 0.5 for hours and 0.01 for rates. Paid hours are capped at 120. If total unpaid hours are 0, the blended rate becomes 0 and the annual value stays at 0. If weekly or monthly salary is selected while paid hours are 0, the hourly equivalent becomes 0. Outsourcing and family-sharing hours are capped at total unpaid hours. Changing the country resets task rates to that country’s defaults. The equivalent hourly rate field is read-only and updates from your wage type and paid hours.
Suppose you live in the United States, work 40 paid hours per week, and earn $30 per hour. You log 44 unpaid hours weekly: 7 hours meal preparation, 5 hours cleaning, 3 hours laundry, 20 hours child care, 4 hours schoolwork, and 5 hours transport.
Using U.S. default rates from the calculator, the task values are approximately:
Meal preparation: 7 × $25.10 = $175.70
Cleaning: 5 × $25.15 = $125.75
Laundry: 3 × $24.55 = $73.65
Child care: 20 × $24.57 = $491.40
Schoolwork: 4 × $34.96 = $139.84
Transport: 5 × $27.48 = $137.40
Total unpaid hours: 44 h/week.
Total unpaid value: $1,143.74 per week.
Annual value: $1,143.74 × 52 = $59,474.48 per year.
If you worked those same 44 hours at your own wage of $30 per hour, the paid-work comparison would be $1,320 per week. The calculator also shows that outsourcing 8 hours and receiving 6 hours of family help frees 14 hours per week. The blended unpaid rate is about $25.99, so the outsourcing cost is about $207.95. The freed time is worth 14 × $30 = $420, giving a net weekly benefit of about $212.05.
The takeaway: unpaid work can carry a replacement value close to a full annual salary, and even partial outsourcing or family sharing can free meaningful time when the math works in your favor.
It measures the replacement cost of household and caregiving labor. Each task is multiplied by an editable market rate, then summed into weekly and annual values. It also compares those unpaid hours with what you would earn at your paid wage.
The tool multiplies hours by a rate for each task, such as cleaning, child care, or meal preparation. It then adds all task values together. The annual figure is the weekly total multiplied by 52.
Yes. Child care and adult care are separate task fields. You can enter weekly hours for each and adjust their outsourcing rates to reflect local caregiving costs.
Your paid wage is used for the “If I worked” comparison and for valuing freed time. It does not change the replacement value of your unpaid tasks unless you use the outsourcing scenario.
Switch the wage toggle to weekly salary or monthly salary. The calculator converts that figure into an equivalent hourly rate using your paid hours per week. If paid hours are 0, the hourly equivalent remains 0.
Yes. Country selection changes the currency symbol and resets task rates to that country’s default multipliers. You can still edit any rate afterward to match your local market.
No. The default rates are starting points based on country multipliers, but every task rate field is editable. Adjust them to reflect what cleaners, sitters, drivers, or repair workers charge where you live.
It is the value of freed time minus the cost to outsource. If the freed time is worth more than the outsourcing cost, the net benefit is positive. If outsourcing costs more, the net benefit is negative.
It can help you organize hours and replacement rates, but it is not a formal appraisal. For divorce, insurance, benefits, or legal matters, consult a qualified professional and use documented local rates.
Review your hours whenever your routine changes, such as a new job, a new child, or a change in caregiving duties. Recheck local outsourcing rates at least once a year because market prices shift
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