Total compensation is the full yearly value of everything an employer pays you: base salary, plus the annual bonus, plus the yearly value of stock grants, plus one-time payments such as a sign-on bonus in the year you receive them. On Levels.fyi, total compensation is reported as base salary + annual bonus + annual stock, where annual stock is the value of the grant divided evenly across the years it takes to vest, so that offers with different mixes of cash and equity can be compared on a single number. The free Levels.fyi Total Compensation Calculator adds up any offer this way, including its vesting schedule.
Base salary alone is a poor way to compare jobs. Across the companies on Levels.fyi, base salaries for a given level tend to sit in a similar, compressed range, while stock and bonus vary by tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. That gap is why every Levels.fyi salary page leads with total compensation and shows base, stock, and bonus underneath it.
The term gets thrown around in tech constantly, but it took me a while to internalize what it really means, and I made an expensive mistake before I did (it is at the end of this article). I wrote the first version of this guide in 2020; this update keeps the lessons and refreshes the numbers, the vesting examples, and the tools.
Levels.fyi has tracked tech compensation since 2017, from offers and pay that employees report themselves, broken down into base, stock, and bonus at each company's levels. Our negotiation team, experienced recruiters from the industry, has reviewed and negotiated offers for thousands of people. This guide is how we evaluate total compensation, drawn from both the data and those negotiations.
What counts toward total compensation
- Base salary: fixed cash, paid every pay period.
- Annual bonus: variable cash, usually a target percentage of base.
- Equity: stock grants (RSUs at public companies, usually options at private ones), counted at their annualized value.
- Sign-on bonus: one-time cash, counted in the year it is paid.
- Not counted: benefits such as health insurance and 401(k) matching. They have real value, but they vary too much from person to person to put on one line.
Throughout the article I will use a hypothetical offer for an L4 (Software Engineer III) at Google, which I have set close to the Levels.fyi median for that level: Google L4 software engineers in the United States reported a median total compensation of about $295,000 over the twelve months to October 2026.
Base salary
Your base salary is the most recognizable piece of your total compensation. It is the amount you receive for being employed, regardless of how the company or you perform that year. For our hypothetical Google engineer, that is $190,000 a year, guaranteed.
Base is also the part that varies least between employers. Companies benchmark base pay against each other, and many cap it (Amazon, for example, caps base salary at $350,000 for every level). The real differences between offers show up in the next two components.
Bonus
Most large companies pay a performance bonus once a year. A bonus has a target amount, typically a percentage of base salary, say 15%, but the amount actually paid moves with your rating and the company's results. At a 15% target, our Google engineer expects about $28,500 a year, but any given year may come in higher or lower. Unlike base salary, it is not fixed.
Bonuses are also usually prorated. If bonuses are paid each March and you join in September, your first bonus may be roughly half of a full year's.
Equity compensation
This is where compensation gets interesting, and where most of the spread between offers lives. A public company grants you Restricted Stock Units (RSUs): shares that become yours over time. In our example, Google grants $320,000 of RSUs as part of the offer.
The RSUs then vest on a schedule. The textbook schedule is four years, 25% per year, sometimes with a one-year cliff (nothing vests until your first anniversary, then 25% arrives at once and the rest monthly or quarterly). Levels.fyi divides the grant by the number of years it takes to fully vest and reports that as annual stock, so a $320,000 grant over four years shows as $80,000 a year.
Two kinds of schedule change the picture, and you should check which one your offer uses:
- Front-loaded schedules pay more of the grant early. According to Levels.fyi vesting data, Google vests 38% / 32% / 20% / 10% over four years, and Nvidia, Oracle, DoorDash, and Databricks use 40% / 30% / 20% / 10%. On the $320,000 grant, Google's schedule delivers $121,600 of stock in year one but only $32,000 in year four.
- Back-loaded schedules pay most of the grant late. Amazon vests 5% / 15% / 40% / 40%, so the same grant would deliver only $16,000 in year one; Amazon fills the gap with a sign-on bonus paid over the first two years.
Averaged over the whole schedule, the annual stock is the same $80,000 either way, which is why the annualized number is the right one for comparing offers you intend to hold for the full vesting period. Year one, however, can look very different, so look at both. The Levels.fyi guide to unusual vesting schedules walks through more examples.
Three more things about equity:
- Refreshers. Most large companies grant additional RSUs each year, so after your initial grant tapers off, refreshers keep annual stock from falling to zero. Levels.fyi submissions include refreshers in reported stock where people report them.
- Price risk. RSUs are valued at the share price on the grant date, but you receive shares, not dollars. By the time you sell, the value can be quite different in either direction. The goal of equity is to align your incentives with the company's: if the company does better, your compensation does too.
- Private companies. Startups usually grant stock options, which let you buy shares later at a fixed price, and the shares typically cannot be sold until an acquisition or IPO. Value private-company equity carefully; you are betting that the shares will be worth much more than the price you pay for them. Our guides to equity in a tech job offer and evaluating startup offers go deeper.
Sign-on bonus
A sign-on bonus is one-time cash, often paid in your first paycheck or split across the first year or two, and sometimes subject to clawback if you leave within a year. It belongs in your first-year total compensation and nowhere else; do not let a large sign-on make a weak recurring package look strong. Levels.fyi lists sign-on bonuses separately on individual salary submissions and keeps them out of the annual median for the same reason.
Benefits
Finally, the long tail: health, dental, and vision insurance, pre-tax commuter benefits, and 401(k) matching, where the company adds money to your retirement account when you contribute yourself. These offset expenses you would have anyway, which is as good as money in your pocket, but most are usage-based, so their value differs from one person to the next. Levels.fyi does not include benefits in total compensation; it tracks them separately, with an estimated annual value, on each company's benefits page, and compares formulas like the 401(k) match across companies.
A worked example
Here is the hypothetical Google L4 offer, built the way Levels.fyi reports it:
| Component | Amount per year |
|---|---|
| Base salary | $190,000 |
| Annual bonus (15% target) | $28,500 |
| Annual stock ($320,000 RSU grant over 4 years) | $80,000 |
| Total compensation | $298,500 |
That is close to the roughly $295,000 median that Google L4 software engineers in the United States reported on Levels.fyi over the twelve months to October 2026.
Now add a $30,000 sign-on bonus and Google's front-loaded 38 / 32 / 20 / 10 vesting, and look at it year by year:
| Year | Base | Bonus | Stock vesting | Sign-on | Cash and stock received |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | $190,000 | $28,500 | $121,600 | $30,000 | $370,100 |
| 2 | $190,000 | $28,500 | $102,400 | $320,900 | |
| 3 | $190,000 | $28,500 | $64,000 | $282,500 | |
| 4 | $190,000 | $28,500 | $32,000 | $250,500 |
Same offer, three honest numbers: $298,500 a year on an annualized basis, $370,100 in the first year, and $250,500 in the fourth year before refreshers. When you hear that an engineer at a big tech company makes $300,000 a year, this is what it means: not a $300,000 salary, but a salary, a bonus, and stock that add up to it.
To try your own numbers, open this Google L4 offer in the Levels.fyi Total Compensation Calculator and change any of the inputs to see what each year pays.
Comparing compensation packages
One of the mistakes I made early in my career was to compare my base salary at LinkedIn with the base salary a startup offered. The startup matched my base, which made me very happy, and I did not register the money I was leaving on the table in the form of stock. At a public company the stock is as good as cash. At the startup I had no way to sell my shares, so at the time it was as if I had received nothing. I would probably have made the same decision for non-monetary reasons, but I wish I had made it knowing all the facts.
So compare offers on total compensation, then check the things the headline number hides:
- Vesting shape. Two offers with the same annualized stock can pay very differently in year one; line them up year by year as in the table above. The Levels.fyi Total Compensation Calculator does this for you and can put several offers side by side.
- Liquidity. Public-company RSUs are cash you have not sold yet. Private-company options are a bet. Discount accordingly.
- Benefits you will use. A rich 401(k) match or a health plan that covers your family can be worth thousands a year to you and nothing to someone else, so price the ones that apply to you.
- The market rate. Before you accept or negotiate, check what the company pays at your level on Levels.fyi, for example software engineer salaries by company and level. If the offer is below the median for the level, that is your opening; the Levels.fyi negotiation coaches have helped thousands of people close that gap.
And of course, non-monetary considerations are always yours to weigh. Whatever you decide, decide it knowing all the facts.
The short version
Total compensation is base salary plus annual bonus plus the annualized value of stock grants, with sign-on bonuses counted only in the year they are paid and benefits left out. Because base salaries are similar across employers while stock and bonus are not, total compensation, not base, is the number to compare offers on; and because vesting schedules differ, look at what each year actually pays before you sign.
Frequently asked questions
What is total compensation? Total compensation is the full yearly value of what an employer pays you: base salary, annual bonus, and the annualized value of stock grants, plus one-time payments such as a sign-on bonus in the year they are paid. Benefits are not included.
How does Levels.fyi calculate total compensation? Levels.fyi reports total compensation as base salary + annual bonus + annual stock, where annual stock is the stock grant's value divided evenly across the years it takes to vest. Sign-on bonuses are listed separately on individual submissions.
Is total compensation the same as salary? No. Salary usually means base salary, the fixed cash part of your pay. Total compensation adds bonus and stock, which at large tech companies can be as large as the base salary or larger.
Why compare offers on total compensation instead of base salary? Because base salaries for a given level are compressed into a similar range across employers, while stock and bonus vary widely. Two offers with the same base can differ by $100,000 or more a year in total compensation.
Does total compensation include benefits? No. Health insurance, 401(k) matching, and other benefits are valuable but usage-based, so Levels.fyi tracks them separately on each company's benefits page rather than adding them to total compensation.
About The Author
Avik is a software engineer who has worked at both small and large tech companies. He is passionate about making hiring better and publishes the Hiring For Tech newsletter. This article was updated by Zaheer Mohiuddin, co-founder of Levels.fyi, in October 2026.