Salary Negotiation Anchor Calculator
Work out your walk-away floor, target and opening figure from your own market research and current pay, compare an offer against them, and get wording you can adapt. Grounded in first-offer and range-offer research.
Salary Negotiation Anchor Calculator
Your market range & your position
The offer (optional)
The offer, per year
Wording you can adapt
Before you name a number
- Compare like with like. A market figure that excludes bonuses or equity cannot be set against an offer that includes them. Singapore's Ministry of Manpower wage tables, for example, exclude bonuses, employer CPF and stock options.
- If they name a number first, think about your own target. In Galinsky and Mussweiler's experiments, focusing on your own target, or on the other side's alternatives, cancelled the advantage of their first offer.
- Keep the range you state inside your research. Ames and Mason found range offers can help without souring the exchange, but that range width and extremity set limits.
- Keep the floor to yourself. It is your best alternative in money; it is not an opening position.
- Do not invent a competing offer. Use your real alternatives and your research.
- Ask for time. Asking for a few days to review the whole package is a normal request.
How to use the Salary Negotiation Anchor Calculator
Research a market range for this exact role
Find what the role pays at your level in your city, as total pay a year, and enter the low and high ends of the honest middle of that market. Salary surveys, recruiters, job adverts that publish ranges and people in the role are all evidence. In Singapore, the Ministry of Manpower's Occupational Wage Survey publishes the 25th percentile, median and 75th percentile of monthly gross wages for common occupations. Its gross wage excludes bonuses, employer CPF and stock options, so multiply by 12 and add bonuses separately before comparing it with a total-pay offer.
Enter your current pay and the raise you need
Your current total pay, or your best other offer, is your alternative if this negotiation fails. Add the raise you would need before the move is worth it, and that is your walk-away floor. With the example figures, $150,000 plus 10% gives a floor of $165,000. Leave current pay blank for a first job, and the floor becomes the bottom of your market range.
Read the three numbers
The target is the middle of your market range, $175,000 in the example; the opening is the top, $210,000. State them as a range: "$175,000 to $210,000". If your floor is higher than the middle of the market, the target moves up to the floor; if it is above the whole range, the tool says so, because then the range or your expectations need another look.
Compare an offer
Enter the offer's parts. The tool adds base, equity per year, the target bonus and any benefits you count, and shows the signing bonus in the first year only. It tells you whether the offer is below your floor, between floor and target, or at or above the target, and what the gap to target would be worth over ten years of raises if it were closed in base pay.
First offers, range offers and your walk-away point
A pay negotiation usually turns on three figures: the least you will accept, the figure you are aiming for, and the figure you say first. This calculator works all three out from your own research and circumstances. It adds no premiums of its own: every number on the page comes from the market range, current pay and minimum raise you enter.
Why the first number matters
Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman's 1974 paper in Science described anchoring in estimates. A wheel of fortune was spun in front of the subjects to produce a number, and they were asked whether the percentage of African countries in the United Nations was higher or lower than it, then for their own estimate. The median estimates were 25 for the group that saw 10 and 45 for the group that saw 65. That was a judgement task, not a negotiation. For negotiation the closer evidence is Galinsky and Mussweiler's three experiments, published in 2001: whichever side made the first offer obtained a better outcome, and first offers strongly predicted the final price.
"Whichever party, the buyer or seller, made the 1st offer obtained a better outcome." Galinsky & Mussweiler, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2001
The same paper has a second finding that matters as much when an employer speaks first. The advantage of the first offer disappeared when the other side concentrated on information pointing the other way: the first offerer's alternatives, their reservation price, or their own target. If you hear a number before you have said one, that is the moment to think about your target rather than theirs.
Why the tool suggests a range
Daniel Ames and Malia Mason studied range offers, such as "I want $7,200 to $7,600 for my car", in five studies published in 2015. They found that certain range offers gave the people making them better settlement terms without harming the relationship, and that range width and extremity limit the effect. The calculator's opening is therefore a range that runs from your target to the top of your own research, rather than a single figure far outside it.
The walk-away point
Roger Fisher, William Ury and Bruce Patton introduced the term BATNA, your best alternative to a negotiated agreement, in Getting to Yes: it is what you will do if you do not reach a deal. For a job offer that is usually your current job or another offer. The calculator turns it into money: current pay plus the raise that would make the move worth it to you. Below that figure, saying no is the better result.
Base pay compounds
A higher base carries into every later year, and raises are usually a percentage of it. At 3% raises a year, an extra $10,000 of base adds $114,639 over ten years in total; each $1,000 adds $11,464. That is why the counter wording puts weight on base salary, and why a one-off signing bonus is shown separately: it does not carry forward.
Singapore pay data
The Ministry of Manpower's Occupational Wage Survey for June 2025, released on 30 June 2026, gives median monthly gross wages for full-time resident employees across all industries. A software developer's median was $7,808 a month, about $93,696 a year before bonuses; a software and applications manager's $12,500. The survey also publishes the 25th and 75th percentiles, which suit this calculator's market range once they are turned into yearly figures and any bonus is added the same way for the offer.
A wheel of fortune, a first-offer experiment, and MOM's wage percentiles
In Tversky and Kahneman's 1974 study, a wheel of fortune spun in front of the subjects moved their estimates: medians of 25 and 45 after seeing 10 and 65.
In Galinsky and Mussweiler's three 2001 experiments, the side that made the first offer obtained the better outcome.
The same experiments found first offers were a strong predictor of the final price.
Thinking about your own target after the other side's first offer cancelled its advantage.
Ames and Mason (2015) tested range offers such as "$7,200 to $7,600 for my car" across five studies.
They found some ranges improved terms without relational costs, within limits set by range width and extremity.
BATNA, the best alternative to a negotiated agreement, comes from Fisher, Ury and Patton's Getting to Yes.
MOM's monthly gross wage leaves out bonuses, employer CPF, stock options and other lump sums.
In June 2025 a Singapore software developer's median monthly gross wage was $7,808 (MOM).
An extra $10,000 of base adds $114,639 over ten years of 3% raises.
Frequently Asked Questions
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This calculator opens at the top of the market range you researched, not above it, and suggests stating a range from your target to that figure. We found no published evidence for a fixed percentage premium, and Ames and Mason's work on range offers found that how wide and how extreme a range is limits whether it helps. An opening you can back with evidence is easier to defend than one you cannot.
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Then think about your own target rather than their figure. In Galinsky and Mussweiler's experiments, the first offer's advantage disappeared when the other side focused on information that pointed the other way, including their own target. Reply with your range and the research behind it.
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Whether an employer may ask depends on where you are, so check the rules that apply to you. Where it is allowed, you can still answer with what you are looking for rather than what you earn: the range from your research. Your current pay is part of your walk-away floor, which is for you to know and not for the employer.
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Compare offers on total recurring pay, but give base the most weight. Raises are usually a percentage of base, so a higher base carries forward: $1,000 more of it is worth $11,464 over ten years of 3% raises. A target bonus may not be paid in full, and a signing bonus is paid once.
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Enter the yearly amount: a grant vesting over four years, divided by four. Shares in a listed company can be sold once they vest, though their price moves. Shares or options in a private company may never become sellable, so run the comparison twice, with the equity and with zero, and see whether the offer still works without it.
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You can still negotiate. Your alternative is your current job, and your evidence is the market research behind your range. Do not invent an offer you do not have.
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Your best alternative to a negotiated agreement: what you will do if you do not reach a deal. Roger Fisher, William Ury and Bruce Patton introduced the term in Getting to Yes. The calculator's walk-away floor puts a figure on it.
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Find your occupation in the Occupational Wage Survey and take its 25th and 75th percentile monthly gross wages. Multiply each by 12 for the market range. MOM's gross wage excludes bonuses, employer CPF and stock options, so either add the bonus you expect to both the range and your current pay, or leave bonuses out of everything, including the offer. A software developer's June 2025 median of $7,808 a month is $93,696 a year before bonuses.
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It may be. Ask whether other parts can move: the signing bonus, equity, leave, the start date or the timing of the first pay review. If nothing moves and the recurring total is below your floor, decline politely.
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No. The calculation runs in your browser; the figures you type are not sent to our server.
Method & sources
How it computes
Walk-away floor = current total pay x (1 + the raise you need), or the bottom of your market range with no current pay. Target = midpoint of your range, or the floor if higher. Opening = top of the range, or the target if higher; target-to-opening is offered as a range. Offer = base + equity/yr + base x target bonus % + benefits; signing in year one only. Compounding b x ((1 + r)^n - 1) / r. No premiums added (SalaryNegotiationKernel).
What this tool implements
- Every anchor comes from the reader's inputs; the tool adds no premium. The opening is the top of the reader's own market range and is offered as a range from the target, after Ames & Mason (2015): certain range offers "yield improved settlement terms for offer-makers without relational costs", within limits of "range width and extremity".
- First offers: Galinsky & Mussweiler (2001), three experiments — whichever side made the first offer obtained a better outcome and first offers strongly predicted settlement prices; focusing on one's own target, or the other side's alternatives or reservation price, negated the effect. Tversky & Kahneman (1974) is cited for anchoring in estimates only (wheel of fortune; medians 25 and 45 after anchors of 10 and 65), not as a negotiation result.
- BATNA is attributed to Fisher, Ury and Patton, Getting to Yes, as the Harvard Program on Negotiation does. Singapore pay figures are MOM's Occupational Wage Survey, June 2025 (released 30 June 2026), with its definition: monthly gross wage excludes employer CPF, bonuses, stock options and other lump sums.
- Corrected 2026-10-17: current pay was never read and the floor was 103% of the offer; the researched range was multiplied by a cost-of-living index and a tier multiplier (location and seniority counted twice); tier premiums of 7-20%, a 65/20/5/10 "target mix", equity and bonus discounts and "most offers settle near the target" were unsourced; signing bonus counted as recurring pay; "$10K becomes more than $135,000" (it is $114,639); anchoring "shifts outcomes by 30-50%"; CareerBuilder 73%, Babcock "4x" and "7%", levels.fyi history, pay-transparency dates, "30-40% accept the first offer", "competing offers lift 10-25%", Singapore salary bands and cost-of-living claims, all removed as unsourced.
Sources
- Galinsky AD, Mussweiler T. First offers as anchors: the role of perspective-taking and negotiator focus. J Pers Soc Psychol 2001;81(4):657-69. PMID 11642352. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11642352/
- Ames DR, Mason MF. Tandem anchoring: informational and politeness effects of range offers in social exchange. J Pers Soc Psychol 2015;108(2):254-74. doi:10.1037/pspi0000016. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25603375/
- Tversky A, Kahneman D. Judgment under uncertainty: heuristics and biases. Science 1974;185(4157):1124-31.
- Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School. What is BATNA? (Fisher, Ury and Patton, Getting to Yes). https://www.pon.harvard.edu/daily/batna/translate-your-batna-to-t…
- Ministry of Manpower, Singapore. Occupational Wages 2025: tables for June 2025 (Table 1; Coverage and Methodology). https://stats.mom.gov.sg/Pages/Occupational-Wages-Tables2025.aspx
What can make this go out of date
- None at runtime; nothing the reader types is sent anywhere. The MOM figures appear in prose only and date to June 2025; the next survey supersedes them.
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