What actually makes an offer good
A good offer is not the biggest base salary; it is the strongest total package for the role, level, and location you are being hired into. The single most common mistake is comparing one number, the base, against a half-remembered figure from a friend in a different city or a different level. Compensation is local and laddered: a senior backend engineer in San Francisco and the same title in Berlin are paid on entirely different scales, and a one-level difference inside the same company can move total comp by thirty to fifty percent. This tool removes that noise by benchmarking your annualised total against the specific slice you selected, so you are comparing like for like.
To compare offers fairly you have to convert everything to one annual number. Base salary is already annual. A target bonus is annual cash, so it adds in directly, though you should treat it as a target rather than a guarantee. Equity is the part people get wrong: a grant is almost always quoted as a total value over a vesting period, usually four years, so the correct annual figure is the grant divided by that period, not the whole grant. A one-off signing or relocation bonus should be amortised over the same window rather than counted as recurring pay, because it does not repeat. Once all four components are on an annual footing you have a number that can be placed on a market distribution honestly.
How to read the percentile
The result places your annualised total on the published percentile band for the role, level, and city: the 10th percentile is the low edge of the typical range, the 90th is the high edge, and the median is the midpoint. If your offer sits below the 25th percentile it is genuinely under market and there is a strong, data-backed case to negotiate before you accept. Around the median, the offer is competitive and the upside is usually in equity refreshers, the level you start at, or non-cash terms rather than base. Above the 75th percentile the offer is strong, and pushing hard on headline cash has diminishing returns; the leverage moves to the terms with asymmetric upside.
Percentiles are an estimate, not a verdict on your worth. The bands are built from real reported pay, but every dataset has gaps, especially for senior and staff levels outside the US and UK where verified samples are thin. Use the percentile to decide how hard to negotiate and where, not as a precise score. The number is most reliable in the middle of the distribution and least reliable at the extreme tails, which is exactly where the underlying sample sizes shrink.
Turning the result into a counter
When the tool says you are under market, the most effective counter anchors on the upper-quartile figure for your slice rather than a round number you picked. Asking for the p75 is defensible precisely because it is inside the published range: you are asking to be paid at the high end of normal, not above it, which is a much easier position for a recruiter to take to a hiring committee. State the figure, attach it to the role and level, and let the market band carry the argument. If headline cash has no room left, redirect the conversation to the equity refresh schedule, a sign-on that bridges any equity you would forfeit by leaving your current job, the review cycle and level you start at, and the start date. Those levers are frequently more flexible than base and can be worth more over a four-year horizon than a few thousand on the salary line.
Always weigh equity risk by company stage. At a public company the grant value is close to liquid and reasonable to count near face value. At a private company the same number depends on a future valuation and a liquidity event that may be years away or may never come, so a private-company offer that looks identical on paper is worth less in expectation than a public one. The evaluator counts equity at the value you enter; it is up to you to discount a private grant before you type it in.
Frequently asked questions
- How does the offer evaluator decide if an offer is good?
- It annualises your offer into a single number (base, plus equity divided by the vesting years, plus target bonus, plus signing amortised over the same window) and places that number on the real percentile distribution for the role, level, and city you chose. The verdict comes from where you land: bottom quartile reads as below market, around the median reads as at market, and the top quartile reads as a strong offer.
- Where does the market data come from?
- The percentile bands are the same dataset used across our salary pages: US BLS Occupational Employment Statistics (May 2024), UK ONS ASHE, and Levels.fyi 2025 verified-offer medians, blended per role and city. Each result shows the source and approximate sample size for the exact slice you are benchmarking against.
- Should I count equity at face value?
- Treat the grant as the company's stated value over the vesting window, then annualise it. For public companies that is close to realistic. For private companies the headline number depends on a future valuation that may not materialise, so weight it down in your own thinking and lean more on base and bonus, which are guaranteed cash.
- What is a fair number to counter with?
- A defensible counter anchors on the upper-quartile (p75) figure for your role, level, and city. It sits inside the published range, so you can frame it as matching the market band rather than asking for an exception. The tool shows that p75 target and the gap between it and your current offer.
- Is this financial advice?
- No. The figures are aggregated reference data describing a market, not personalised financial advice, an offer, or a guarantee of pay. Your actual compensation depends on level calibration, equity terms, benefits, tax, and negotiation. Verify any figure against primary sources before making a decision.