Which route pays off sooner?

A 3-month coding bootcamp costs 5,000-15,000 and leads to starting salaries of 30,000-55,000. A 3-4 year computer science degree costs 27,000-60,000 in tuition plus 3-4 years of foregone earnings, and leads to starting salaries of 30,000-45,000. On pure financial grounds, bootcamps often win big.

This calculator lays out both paths. A 10,000 bootcamp leading to a 40,000 starting salary vs a 40,000 degree leading to 38,000 starting salary, over 15 years of benefit, shows the bootcamp winning by roughly 140,000 - driven almost entirely by the foregone earnings during the degree.

The financial case doesn't tell the whole story. Degrees open doors to specific roles (research, academia, highly regulated industries) and confer broader learning. Bootcamps are narrower and often require more self-directed career development afterward. The tool shows pure financial difference - treat it as input to the decision, not the decision itself.

A worked example

Try the defaults: bootcamp total cost of 10,000, bootcamp duration of 3, bootcamp starting salary of 40,000, degree total cost of 40,000. The tool returns 202,500.00. You can adjust any input and the result updates as you type — no submit button, no reload. That's the real power here: seeing how sensitive the output is to one or two assumptions.

What moves the number most

The result responds to Bootcamp Total Cost, Bootcamp Duration, Bootcamp Starting Salary, Degree Total Cost, and Degree Duration. Two inputs usually tip the answer one way or the other. Identify which ones matter most by flipping each value past a round threshold and watching whether the winning option changes.

The formula behind this

Bootcamp net = starting salary × total years - bootcamp cost. Degree net = starting salary × (total years - degree years + bootcamp months/12) - degree cost. Difference = bootcamp net - degree net. Everything the calculator does is shown in the formula box below, so you can check the math against your own spreadsheet if you want.

Spreading the cost

Starting earlier always costs less per month than starting late. That's the main lever this tool surfaces. Whatever the total, dividing it by the months until the event gives a monthly target that's easier to build into a budget.

What this doesn't capture

Life events generate side costs the figure doesn't include: time off work, lost income, travel for others, aftercare. Add 10–15% to the direct number as a buffer; the items you haven't thought of usually fill most of it.