# How to find out what you should be paid Source: https://glide.work/guides/how-to-find-your-market-value Published: 2026-11-13 Updated: 2026-11-13 [Guides](https://glide.work/guides) # How to find out what you should be paid By [Shubhankar Kahali](https://glide.work/company) Reviewed 13 November 2026 4 min read The short answer Your market value is the range employers currently pay for your role, in your location, at your level of experience. To find it, define those three things precisely, look up the low, typical and high figures from a source built on real pay data, and place your own pay on that range. Go into any offer conversation knowing the range, not a single number. Pay decides more of a person’s financial life than almost anything else, and it is the figure most people learn by rumour. Employers do not. A company making an offer knows what the role pays across the market and what people like you earned last year. This guide is about closing that gap. ## What market value means Market value is not one number. It is a range with three useful points: - **Low:** what the role pays at the bottom of the market, often smaller employers or cheaper locations. - **Typical:** the middle of the market, where most offers land. - **High:** what the best-paying employers offer for the same work. Where you should sit on that range depends on your experience, your employer’s size and sector, and how scarce your skills are. ## How to find yours, step by step - **Name the role as the market names it.** Internal titles mislead. Find the title most employers use for the work you do. - **Fix the location.** Pay for the same role varies widely between cities and countries. Remote roles are usually priced on the employer’s policy, not yours. - **Fix the level.** Years of experience in this kind of work, not total years worked. - **Look up the range** from a source that draws on many real pay observations and tells you how many. - **Compare like with like.** Put everything on an annual basis in one currency. Base pay, bonus and equity are separate lines. - **Place yourself on the range.** How far above or below typical are you, as a percentage? - **Look one rung up and one rung down.** What the next level pays tells you what a promotion or a move is worth. ## How to judge a pay source Not all salary data is equal. Before trusting a figure, ask: - **How many observations is it built on?** A range from a handful of reports is a guess. - **How fresh is it?** Pay moves. Data from two years ago is history. - **Is it normalised?** Monthly, hourly and annual figures, and different currencies, must be converted before they sit side by side. - **Does it admit when it does not know?** A source that shows a confident number for every title in every town is inventing some of them. ## Why this matters at the offer stage Most people accept the first number. Fewer than a third of US workers asked for more pay the last time they were hired, according to [Pew Research](https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/04/05/when-negotiating-starting-salaries-most-us-women-and-men-dont-ask-for-higher-pay/), and many of those who did not said they were uncomfortable asking. Knowing the range changes that conversation. “The market for this role in this city runs from X to Y, and my experience puts me above the middle” is a statement of fact, not a demand. It matters between offers too. People change jobs often: a long-running US study found an average of 12.7 jobs between the ages of 18 and 56 ([BLS](https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/nlsoy.pdf)). Each move is priced off the last, so one underpaid year compounds. ## Using Glide’s Market Value [Glide](https://glide.work/) includes Market Value, pay benchmarking on a dataset we refresh continuously. Tell it your role, city and experience and it shows the low, typical and high for that work, places your own pay on the range as a percentage, and shows the rung above and below. Every figure is annualised and normalised before it is compared, and where the data is thin, it says so. Our founder explains the thinking in [Your market value is not a guess](https://glide.work/blog/your-market-value-is-not-a-guess). ## Common questions ### How do I know if I am underpaid? Compare your base pay with the typical figure for your role, location and experience. If you sit well below typical without a clear reason, such as a much smaller employer or a recent career change, you are likely underpaid relative to the market. ### What salary should I ask for? Ask within the top half of the market range for the role, at a point you can justify with your experience. Naming a figure anchored in market data is stronger than naming your current pay plus a percentage. ### Should I tell a recruiter my current salary? You are rarely obliged to, and in some places employers may not ask. It is usually better to state the range you are looking for, based on the market for the role, than to anchor the conversation on what you earn now. ### How often does market pay change? Continuously. Pay for in-demand skills can move within months, which is why a benchmark built on recent data matters more than one annual survey. ## Keep reading [What is an AI career agent? An AI career agent works for the job seeker: it finds roles, researches employers, prepares applications and handles replies. What one does, and what to look for. 4 min read](https://glide.work/guides/what-is-an-ai-career-agent)[How many job applications does it take to get a job? Employers now process roughly 300 applications per hire, about triple 2021. What that means for one candidate, and how to need fewer applications. 4 min read](https://glide.work/guides/how-many-job-applications-to-get-a-job)[Why am I not hearing back from job applications? Most applications never get a reply. Here are the six usual reasons, from application volume to ghost jobs, and what to change so more of yours are answered. 4 min read](https://glide.work/guides/why-no-reply-to-job-applications) Glide is the agent on your side of hiring. See [what it does](https://glide.work/), [how it compares](https://glide.work/compare) and [the research behind it](https://glide.work/research/the-2026-labour-market). Join in ## Your invitation is waiting to be written. An invitation Glide, by invitation only You are invited. To whoever is looking for work, Every piece of hiring software was built for the company doing the hiring. Glide is the other side: an agent that works for you, from finding the role to handling what comes back. We let people in a few hundred at a time, every Friday. Leave your email and we will write the moment your spot opens. Your agent starts the same day. Shubhankar Kahali Founder of Glide Admits One person You, and the agent that works for you. Opens On a Friday New spots open every week. Begins The same day Your agent starts as soon as you are in. Costs you One email To get in line. No card, no form. RSVP Already on the list? [Sign in](https://glide.work/login)