Is it true that most people who accept a counter offer leave anyway within a year?

This is widely repeated in career advice and plausible given how relationships and trust change after a resignation attempt, but it is not a number this tool can verify or attribute to a specific study. Treat it as a reason to weigh the relationship risk seriously, not as a guaranteed statistic.

What if pay really was my only issue?

Then a counter offer that genuinely matches the market can be the right call, and this tool will score that combination favourably. The failure mode it is built to catch is a raise offered when pay was not the only or even the main reason you were leaving.

Should I tell my current employer I have another offer to try to get a counter?

That is a negotiation and career-risk decision this tool does not weigh in on. If you do, be prepared for either a genuine counter or, in some workplaces, a manager who now treats your loyalty as settled, whichever way the conversation goes.

Should you accept the counter offer?

A counter offer arrives fast, flatters you, and asks for an answer in a day or two. That combination makes it hard to think straight, which is exactly when a checklist helps more than a gut feeling.

This does not tell you what to do. It scores the signals that predict whether accepting tends to work out, drawn from why counter offers are made in the first place: an employer buying time to replace you on their own schedule, not necessarily fixing what made you leave.

Which of these are true for you right now

Pay was genuinely the only reason I was leavingIf the answer is no, a raise alone will not fix the actual reason, and the same reason tends to resurface within a year.The counter offer matches or beats what I was actually offered elsewhereA counter that is meaningfully below the competing offer is often designed to keep you just long enough to replace you, not to actually match the market for you.I would have accepted my current terms if this raise had simply been given six months ago, unpromptedIf the honest answer is no, the raise is arriving only because you threatened to leave, and that is worth noticing about how this employer values you.The non-pay reasons I was unhappy, such as scope, manager or growth, have also been concretely addressedA raise with no change to the role, manager or path forward tends to leave the original problem intact under a bigger number.I trust that accepting will not be held against me by my manager or team going forwardOnce you have shown you were ready to leave, the relationship often changes, whatever the new number says. That shift is the thing to weigh here.Withdrawing from my other process costs me little or nothing at this stageIf withdrawing burns real goodwill with a company you might want later, that is a cost worth weighing, not just the number on the table here.There is now a specific, agreed next step for my growth here, not just a vague assuranceA specific title, project or timeline is a commitment. "We will figure something out" is not.

Read on this counter offer

The signals lean toward declining

0 of 7 positive signals checked

Positive signals: 0 of 7
Pay was the only stated issue: No
Non-pay issues concretely resolved: No

Everything above is worked out in your browser. Nothing you type is sent to us or saved anywhere.

How this is worked out

Each checked signal counts as one point, with no single signal weighted higher than another.
A high score across the board leans toward accepting. A low score, or a pattern where pay was checked as the only issue but non-pay issues were not resolved, is flagged as the specific case where a raise is unlikely to fix the real problem.
This is a structured second opinion, not a formula with a right answer. Two people with the same score can reasonably decide differently based on their own risk tolerance.

What this does not cover

This does not know the number on either offer. Run the offer comparison calculator first if the decision is close on pay alone.
It does not account for your specific company’s track record with counter offers, such as whether people who accepted them were later managed out quietly. That pattern, if it exists where you work, matters more than any generic statistic.
It will not tell you to accept or decline. It is built to surface the one failure mode people miss under time pressure: solving the wrong problem with the only lever an employer reaches for by default, which is pay.

Questions people ask

Is it true that most people who accept a counter offer leave anyway within a year?: This is widely repeated in career advice and plausible given how relationships and trust change after a resignation attempt, but it is not a number this tool can verify or attribute to a specific study. Treat it as a reason to weigh the relationship risk seriously, not as a guaranteed statistic.
What if pay really was my only issue?: Then a counter offer that genuinely matches the market can be the right call, and this tool will score that combination favourably. The failure mode it is built to catch is a raise offered when pay was not the only or even the main reason you were leaving.
Should I tell my current employer I have another offer to try to get a counter?: That is a negotiation and career-risk decision this tool does not weigh in on. If you do, be prepared for either a genuine counter or, in some workplaces, a manager who now treats your loyalty as settled, whichever way the conversation goes.

Where these figures come from

Rates and rules on this page were last checked against the source on 31 August 2026. Tax law changes; check the source before you rely on a number for a decision.

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