Bill Gates
Bill Gates' annual income comes largely from dividends, investments, and liquidations of Microsoft stock, plus book royalties and speaking. His wealth is managed through Cascade Investment and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Since January 1st
Year progress
68.9% of the year
How to read Bill Gates's earnings per second
Gates's figure on this page tracks change in net worth, not a paycheck: most of it flows through Cascade Investment, the private vehicle run by Michael Larson that diversified Gates's fortune out of Microsoft stock decades ago into holdings like Canadian National Railway, Republic Services, and large farmland and hospitality assets. Microsoft dividends and residual share sales still matter, but they are now a minority of the swing. As with Musk, a single-day move in Cascade's portfolio or in MSFT shares can outweigh any royalty or speaking income Gates reports.
Bloomberg's Billionaires Index and Forbes both estimate Gates's net worth by marking his known holdings to market daily, which is exactly the method this site borrows at annual resolution. That makes his entry a good side-by-side with Buffett's: both derive from decades-old equity stakes rather than salaries, but Gates's is now spread across many companies through Cascade while Buffett's remains concentrated in Berkshire Hathaway. Comparing the two shows how a diversified billionaire's and a concentrated billionaire's wealth can grow at similar dollar rates through very different mechanics.
Philanthropy pulls the other way: Gates has committed most of his fortune to the Giving Pledge and moves billions into the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust—an entity legally separate from his personal balance sheet—each year. His 2021 divorce from Melinda French Gates also involved a significant transfer of jointly held assets. None of these outflows are modeled here; the figure is a gross wealth-change estimate, not a net-of-giving figure, so it likely overstates what actually stays in Gates's personal accounts.
Verify the underlying holdings through Cascade's periodic SEC 13F filings and Microsoft's own proxy statements, which disclose Gates's remaining direct MSFT stake. Bloomberg Billionaires and Forbes Real-Time Net Worth are better live references than this counter, which intentionally uses a flat annual spread for teaching purposes. See the Buffett and Bezos pages on this site for two more variations on how equity wealth is estimated.
Time Breakdown
$221.97
per second
$13,318.11
per minute
$799,086.76
per hour
$19,178,082.19
per day
$7B
per year
How is this calculated?
// Annual amount
$7B
÷ 31,536,000 seconds/year
// Per second
= $221.97/sec
The counter starts from January 1st of the current year and accumulates at a rate of $221.97 every second, based on Bill Gates's estimated annual figure of $7B.
Methodology
Annual income is estimated from reported stock sales, dividend income, and investment returns. Per-second rate divides the yearly estimate by 31,536,000.
While you were here
$0.00
While the world…
Since January 1st, these global totals also moved
World GDP
$76.63T
Global Military Spending
$1.99T
Global Digital Advertising Spend
$413.28B
Global Food Waste (Value Lost)
$688.8B
While You Were on This Page
Data Sources
Forbes, Bloomberg Billionaires Index
https://www.forbes.com/profile/bill-gates/Disclaimer
Income estimates are based on public reports and may not reflect exact figures.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does Bill Gates earn per second?
Based on an estimated $7 billion in annual income from investments and stock sales, Bill Gates earns approximately $222 per second.