Map My Pay is the app I built so nurses can see what they actually keep after taxes and housing, city by city. It started as my monster spreadsheets. In June 2025 it went live on the App Store.
The pay rates and features here are from March to June 2025, when this was first written. Pay changes every year, so check current rates in Map My Pay.
Why we built Map My Pay
In 2024, my DMs filled up with nurses from all over the country. They all wanted help raising their pay.
One nurse made $32 an hour in Jacksonville. Another made $122 an hour in Sacramento. They had the same job title and did the same role, but they lived very different lives.
Gaps like that keep me up at night. A lot of nurses are not given the full picture of what they could earn. We built Map My Pay to change that.
So Monica covered extra shifts while Sumeet, my cofounder, and I turned my spreadsheets into one clean app. We wrote about that build in from $93 a month to launching a nurse salary app.
The first look: March 2025
We first told nurses about Map My Pay in March 2025. Back then, we planned for it to help you:
- Compare your take-home pay after taxes across 590+ U.S. cities.
- Add in housing costs, crime data and nurse-to-patient ratios.
- Share paystubs and stories with other nurses.
- See how much you’d have left each month, renting or owning.
- Figure out how much you could invest for retirement based on your income.
The private beta: April 2025
By April 2025, a small group of nurses was testing a private beta. These features were already working:
- Pay for RNs in each city, with tax and housing data built in.
- A tool that shows what you have left after taxes and rent or a mortgage.
- Paystub and union contract uploads to make the data more accurate.
- A community page where nurses share stories and ask questions.
- A home screen that shows your estimated savings in a city.
- An investing tool that changes with the city you pick.
- Search and filters by role, state, salary and more.
What we planned to add next
In April 2025, we hoped to add these before launch:
- Savings Meter: shows if you’re Thriving, Doing Okay, Tight or In the Red based on your leftover income.
- Affordability Badges: tell you if rent or a mortgage is doable or a money pit on your salary.
- Salary Breakdown Pie Chart: shows where your money goes, from taxes to housing to what’s left for you.
- Crime Safety Score: shows if a city is low, moderate or high risk. No nurse wants to move somewhere they don’t feel safe.
- Lifestyle Match Calculator: shows how much you’d need to earn in a new city to live like you do now.
- Live Here, Work There Mode: compares pay in one city with housing in another. For example, you could work in San Francisco, live in Vallejo and keep more of your paycheck.
- Rent vs. Own Toggle: shows how your leftover income changes if you rent or buy.
We also planned three tiers: Free, Plus and Pro. Free had RN data for 10 cities. Plus added editable salaries, all nursing roles and 10+ cities. Pro added 48+ healthcare careers to compare, hospital-level pay estimates in a later update, and tools like investments and alerts.
Our goal was to be on the App Store and Google Play by May 30, 2025. We also said we would rather wait an extra week than ship a buggy app.
Launch: June 2025
By June 22, 2025, Map My Pay was live on the App Store. Google Play was coming soon. At launch, the app let you:
- Compare pay in 590 cities using BLS data and paystubs shared by nurses.
- See your take-home pay after taxes, rent or a mortgage.
- Check crime, schools and weather before you pack a box.
- Join a nurse-only community to swap pay slips and hospital reviews.
I filmed an 18-minute walkthrough. It’s short enough for your lunch break, with screens you can follow step by step.
Map My Pay today
Map My Pay now covers 465+ hospitals and 21,000+ cities. To see how take-home pay stacks up at the top hospitals, read net pay at the top-paying California hospitals. To see what it cost to build, read what we spent building a nurse app.
Your next move
See what you’d take home, then make the move
Map My Pay shows what nurses take home after taxes and rent at 465+ hospitals and in 21,000+ cities. It’s the app I co-founded so you can compare cities before you pack a single box.
The Nurses to Riches Accelerator is the plan Monica and I used to go from $37 an hour in New York to $143 an hour in California: license, city, hospital, and what to do with the money after.
Get the Map My Pay app See the Accelerator plans
Every Accelerator plan is a one-time payment with a 30-day money-back guarantee.
Written by Jason, RN. I went from $37 an hour in New York to $143 an hour in California and paid off $128K of debt in under a year. I share our numbers in the Nurses to Riches newsletter and on YouTube.