ForHosting KIT · Finance & money

California overtime calculator

At 20 an hour, five 10-hour days in a 50-hour week give 10 hours at time-and-a-half: 300 of overtime pay on top of 800 of regular pay. Enter your wage, daily hours and weekly hours to apply California's rules. Free in your browser.

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Run — free How it works & API

Use it from WebAPIEmailTelegramApp soon

Worked example

If you enter

Hourly wage: 20
Hours per day: 10
Hours per week: 50

You get

Workdays: 5
Daily hours: 10, 10, 10, 10, 10
Regular hours: 40
Time and half hours: 10

California overtime is not a single multiplier after forty hours. Non-exempt employees earn time-and-a-half after eight hours in a workday, double time after twelve hours in a workday, time-and-a-half for remaining straight-time hours over forty in a workweek, and a seventh-consecutive-day premium when all seven days of the workweek are worked. This California overtime calculator takes a regular hourly wage together with hours worked per day and hours worked per week, reconstructs a seven-day-or-shorter workweek, applies those statutory thresholds without stacking daily and weekly premiums on the same hour, and returns total overtime compensation—the pay at one-and-a-half and double-time rates for every overtime hour.

What California overtime means: daily eight and twelve, weekly forty, seventh day

California overtime for non-exempt employees is a schedule of statutory multipliers, not a single forty-hour switch. In a workday the first eight hours are straight time at the regular hourly wage, hours after eight and through twelve are paid at one and one-half times that wage, and hours after twelve are paid at double time. Independently, remaining straight-time hours above forty in the same workweek are also paid at one and one-half times the regular wage.

When an employee works all seven days of a workweek, the first eight hours on that seventh consecutive day are paid at time-and-a-half and hours after eight on that day are paid at double time, even if the ordinary daily eight-hour threshold would have treated those hours as regular.

This calculator reconstructs a workweek from hours worked per day and hours worked per week, classifies every hour into regular, time-and-a-half, or double-time buckets, then converts remaining straight-time hours over forty into weekly overtime so the same hour is never given both a daily premium and a weekly premium. Total overtime compensation is the money paid at overtime rates: time-and-a-half hours times one point five times the wage, plus double-time hours times two times the wage.

It is not a tax withholding, meal-penalty, or split-shift engine, and it does not classify exempt versus non-exempt status.

What you can do with it

Ten-hour California workdays

Turn a 10-hour day and a 50-hour week at a known hourly wage into daily time-and-a-half hours and total overtime compensation.

Sixth-day weekly overtime checks

See when an 8-hour day and a 48-hour week creates weekly overtime on leftover straight-time hours rather than daily overtime.

FAQ

What happens if the hourly wage is below zero?

A negative hourly wage cannot produce California overtime compensation, and failed validation is not billed.

Does weekly overtime stack on hours already paid as daily overtime?

No. Weekly overtime applies only to remaining straight-time hours above 40 in the workweek. Hours already paid at daily time-and-a-half or double time are not given a second weekly premium.

When does the seventh consecutive day rule apply?

When the reconstructed workweek has seven days and every day has hours greater than zero. The last day then pays 1.5× for the first 8 hours and 2× after 8 hours.

When does double time start under California overtime rules?

After 12 hours in a single workday. On the seventh consecutive day of a workweek it starts earlier, after 8 hours, and the first 8 hours that day are already paid at time-and-a-half.

Does the California overtime calculator handle meal penalties or exempt status?

No. It covers the overtime rates for non-exempt employees only. It does not work out tax withholding, meal-break penalties or split-shift pay, and it does not decide whether a job is exempt or non-exempt.

Related tools

For developers — API access

Everything on this page is available programmatically. This section is for teams who want to wire it into their own systems; everyone else can just use the tool above.

API endpoint

POSThttps://api.kit.forhosting.com/fin/california-overtime

Prefer to automate it? One authenticated POST creates the task; the result comes back by webhook or a signed link. The same capability also runs here on the web, by email and from Telegram — and soon from our app too.

Call it from your stack

curl -X POST https://api.kit.forhosting.com/fin/california-overtime \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $KIT_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"hourly_wage":20,"hours_per_day":10,"hours_per_week":50}'

const res = await fetch("https://api.kit.forhosting.com/fin/california-overtime", {
  method: "POST",
  headers: {
    "Authorization": `Bearer ${process.env.KIT_KEY}`,
    "Content-Type": "application/json"
  },
  body: JSON.stringify({
    "hourly_wage": 20,
    "hours_per_day": 10,
    "hours_per_week": 50
  })
});
const { task_id } = await res.json();

import os, requests

res = requests.post(
    "https://api.kit.forhosting.com/fin/california-overtime",
    headers={"Authorization": f"Bearer {os.environ['KIT_KEY']}"},
    json={
    "hourly_wage": 20,
    "hours_per_day": 10,
    "hours_per_week": 50
},
)
task_id = res.json()["task_id"]

<?php
$res = file_get_contents("https://api.kit.forhosting.com/fin/california-overtime", false, stream_context_create([
  "http" => [
    "method"  => "POST",
    "header"  => "Authorization: Bearer " . getenv("KIT_KEY") . "\r\nContent-Type: application/json",
    "content" => '{"hourly_wage":20,"hours_per_day":10,"hours_per_week":50}',
  ],
]));
$task = json_decode($res, true);

body := bytes.NewBufferString(`{"hourly_wage":20,"hours_per_day":10,"hours_per_week":50}`)
req, _ := http.NewRequest("POST", "https://api.kit.forhosting.com/fin/california-overtime", body)
req.Header.Set("Authorization", "Bearer "+os.Getenv("KIT_KEY"))
req.Header.Set("Content-Type", "application/json")
res, _ := http.DefaultClient.Do(req)

Example request

{
  "hourly_wage": 20,
  "hours_per_day": 10,
  "hours_per_week": 50
}

Example response

{
  "task_id": "tsk_a1b2c3d4e5f6a1b2c3d4e5f6",
  "type": "fin.california_overtime",
  "status": "queued",
  "_links": {
    "result": "/tasks/tsk_…/result"
  }
}

The API is asynchronous: the call returns a task_id immediately and the result arrives by webhook. Polling is capped at 1 req/s per task.

Pricing

Per request$0.002

Published price — no tokens, no invented credits. A failed task is never charged.

Limits

`max_hours_per_day`	24
`max_hours_per_week`	168

Errors

HTTP	Code	Meaning
`401`	`unauthorized`	Missing or invalid API key.
`402`	`insufficient_balance`	Your balance doesn't cover the task price.
`404`	`unknown_type`	That task type doesn't exist.
`429`	`rate_limited`	Too many requests. Use the webhook instead of polling.

Technical notes

A wage below zero is rejected with invalid_input because a negative hourly rate cannot produce a lawful overtime dollar amount. The same pure arithmetic powers the free browser tool and the API path, so a payroll worksheet and an automation script never disagree on the overtime line.

Input contract, workweek reconstruction, response shape, and rejected wages

Zero wage is allowed and yields zero overtime pay. Negative day or week hours, a day longer than twenty-four hours, or a week longer than seven twenty-four-hour days also fail. Money fields are rounded to two decimal places; hour fields use six. Optional output keys are omitted rather than set to null. POST a JSON body with three required finite numbers. hourly_wage is the regular rate before California overtime premiums; aliases wage, rate, hourly_rate, and pay_rate are accepted so payroll forms can reuse the same contract. hours_per_day is the typical workday length used to rebuild the week, at most twenty-four; aliases daily_hours, day_hours, and hours_day map to the same value. hours_per_week is the total hours in the workweek, at most one hundred sixty-eight; aliases weekly_hours, week_hours, and hours_week are honored. The engine fills complete days of hours_per_day and puts any leftover on a last day, refusing a pattern that would need more than seven workdays because a California workweek has seven days. Numeric strings that parse as finite decimals are accepted; empty strings, NaN, and Infinity fail with invalid_input naming the field. If hourly_wage is below zero the request is rejected with a message that a negative hourly wage cannot produce California overtime compensation—that is the hard contract of this calculator, and those failures are not billed. On success the body echoes the wage and hour inputs, lists the reconstructed daily_hours, reports regular_hours, time_and_half_hours, double_time_hours, overtime_hours, seventh_day_applied, regular_pay, time_and_half_pay, double_time_pay, overtime_pay (total overtime compensation), overtime_premium, gross_pay, and a formula string.

Where a California overtime calculator earns its keep

Payroll clerks and small California employers use a California overtime calculator when a timesheet shows ten-hour days or a sixth day and they need the overtime dollar line before a paycheck is cut, without opening a full HR suite. Employees check a fifty-hour week at a known hourly wage against the eight-hour daily rule so a ten-hour day is not mistaken for a forty-hour federal-only schedule. Teachers and HR classrooms generate answer keys for non-exempt schedules that mix daily overtime, double time after twelve, weekly overtime on leftover straight time, and a seventh consecutive day, instead of trusting opaque apps that apply a single multiplier to hours the student already classified. Staffing tools put overtime_pay next to regular_pay so a coordinator sees statutory overtime compensation, not a wall of raw hours. On this page the work runs entirely in the browser; through the API each successful lookup costs $0.002, failed validation is not charged, and nothing is stored after the response returns. Pair the free interactive run with the priced, identical API when you move from a worksheet demo to an automated pipeline without changing the mathematical result or re-implementing the California schedule yourself.

Integration use cases

Deterministic payroll fixtures

Seed CI and payroll calculators with stable overtime_pay, double-time, and seventh-day flags from known wage and hour inputs.

Technical questions

How is California overtime calculated from hours per day and week?

The engine rebuilds the workweek from hours_per_day and hours_per_week, pays 1.5× after 8 hours in a day and 2× after 12, then converts remaining straight-time hours over 40 into weekly 1.5×. overtime_pay is 1.5×wage×time-and-a-half hours plus 2×wage×double-time hours.

What does the California overtime calculator cost?

The browser tool is free. API requests use prepaid KIT balance at $0.002 per successful call; invalid input is not billed.

Read the full KIT documentation →

Run — free