The honest UK salary calculator
Ten free, accurate UK pay and tax tools that turn your gross salary into the pound figure that actually lands in your account. No clutter, no sign up required.
Quick estimate
Take home (year)
£28,720
Take home (month)
£2,393
Income tax
£4,486
NI
£1,794
Gross
£35,000
Categories
Browse by what you need to work out
- Take home pay77.0%
- Income tax12.8%
- National Insurance5.1%
- Pension at 5%5.0%
Sample payslip
Month 06 · 2025/26Gross pay
£2,916.67
Pension (5%)
£145.83
Taxable pay
£2,770.84
Income tax
£373.83
National Insurance
£149.52
Net pay
£2,247.66
Personal allowance
£12,570
Standard 1257L code
Basic rate
20%
Up to £50,270
Higher rate
40%
Up to £125,140
Additional rate
45%
Above £125,140
All calculators
Ten tools, one consistent product
Accurate and current
Every figure uses the published HMRC 2025/26 thresholds, with admin editable config for next tax year.
Private by design
Calculations run in your browser. We never sell or share your inputs.
Free to use
No ads, no upsells, no paywalls. Create an account only if you want to save results.
Pay
Gross to net, every pound traced
Income tax, National Insurance, pension and student loan figures sit beside the salary that arrives in your account.
Pension
See what one extra percent does
Push your contribution by a single point and the calculator shows the cost today and the compounded pot tomorrow.
Leave
Holiday, maternity and notice mapped out
Statutory pay and entitlement windows for every working pattern in the UK, ready to plan against.
About this site
A complete pay and tax toolkit for life in the UK
A salary is a promise written in gross. Your bank account only ever sees the net. Somewhere between the two sit the personal allowance, the income tax bands, National Insurance, a workplace pension and, for a lot of people, a student loan that behaves nothing like a loan. Salary Calculator exists to close that gap in about ten seconds, then explain the maths well enough that you can argue with payroll and win.
Take a salary of £35,000 with a standard tax code and the usual auto enrolment pension. Payroll takes roughly £1,750 into the pension, taxes what is left band by band, applies National Insurance on the slice above the primary threshold, and pays across a monthly figure in the low £2,200s. Nothing on your contract tells you that. Every tool here does.
£35,000
Salary on the contract
£2,2xx
Roughly in your account each month
10
Seconds to find out precisely
Read your payslip in the order payroll writes it
Payslips confuse people because they list deductions as a flat set, as if each one takes a bite of the same cake. They do not. They run in sequence, and the sequence decides how much each one costs you.
Pension comes off first, or sits beside the total
Under salary sacrifice your contribution leaves gross pay before anything else touches it, so you save income tax and National Insurance on the same pound. Under relief at source it leaves net pay and HMRC tops the pot up instead. Same headline percentage, different payslip.
The personal allowance covers the first slice
Your tax code carries the allowance. 1257L means the first £12,570 escapes income tax across the year, spread evenly across pay periods. A benefit such as private medical cover shrinks that code, which is why a promotion with perks can raise your tax bill by more than you expected.
Income tax applies band by band
Only the money inside a band pays that band's rate. Crossing into higher rate does not reprice your whole salary, it reprices the slice above the threshold. That single point clears up most pay rise disappointment.
National Insurance runs per pay period
Income tax is worked out cumulatively across the year. NI is not. It looks at each pay period on its own, which is why a bonus paid in one lump costs more NI than the same money spread across twelve months.
Student loan sits on top of everything
It is a percentage of income above your plan threshold and it does not reduce your taxable pay. Two plans running together, an undergraduate plan and a postgraduate one, take two separate slices.
Worth knowingThe most expensive misunderstanding in British pay is thinking a higher rate taxpayer pays 40% on everything. On £55,000 the effective income tax rate is closer to 18%.
The £100,000 trap, and why the pension button is the answer
Between £100,000 and £125,140 the personal allowance disappears at a rate of one pound for every two pounds earned. The headline rate on that stretch says 40%. The real rate is 60%, because losing allowance means more of your income falls into tax at the same time as you are paying tax on the new money.
A bonus that pushes you into that window can therefore leave you with £400 out of £1,000, and a pension contribution large enough to drop you back under £100,000 costs you almost nothing in take home. Run both versions in the pension calculator and the decision usually makes itself in under a minute.
The same logic runs at smaller salaries with student loan repayments and the child benefit charge stacked on top. Marginal rates in the UK are lumpy. The only reliable way to see your own is to model it rather than assume it.
Scotland changes the answer, England, Wales and Northern Ireland share one
Income tax on earnings is devolved in Scotland. Six bands replace four, the ramp at the bottom is gentler and the higher rate starts earlier. Someone on £60,000 in Glasgow keeps meaningfully less than someone on £60,000 in Leeds, while National Insurance stays identical because it is reserved to Westminster.
Every tool here carries a region switch for exactly that reason. If you are weighing a relocation, run the offer twice and compare the net figures rather than the salaries. Rent, council tax and commuting costs then sit on top of a number you can trust.
Which calculator answers which question
The salary calculator is the front door. Gross in, net out, yearly, monthly and weekly, with the breakdown open so you can check it against a real payslip line by line.
The take home calculator runs the same engine backwards for anyone paid four weekly, on shifts or on variable hours, where the weekly figure is the one that decides whether the month works.
The income tax calculator splits the bill band by band and shows the taper zone. The National Insurance calculator covers employees on Class 1 and the self employed on Class 4, including the step down above the upper limit.
The pension calculator prices a percentage change three ways at once, showing what leaves your take home, what relief adds back, and what the yearly contribution becomes. The student loan calculator handles Plans 1, 2, 4 and 5 with postgraduate borrowing alongside.
Holiday entitlement covers full time, part time and irregular hours, including the 12.07% accrual method used for zero hours contracts. Redundancy pay applies the age banded formula with the weekly cap. Maternity pay walks the thirty nine week window at 90% then the statutory rate. Job offer comparison puts three offers side by side and settles the argument about whether more salary or more employer pension wins.
Five checks before you accept an offer
Compare net pay, not gross. A £3,000 rise that pushes you across a threshold can be worth less in the hand than a £2,000 rise that does not.
Price the employer pension properly. Six percent from an employer on £48,000 beats four percent on £50,000 within a few years, and the gap widens for the rest of your working life.
Ask how bonuses are paid. A lump sum in March carries a heavier NI charge than the same amount paid monthly, and it can drag your tax code around for a period afterwards.
Check whether the pension runs on salary sacrifice. It is worth roughly the NI on your contribution every year, and plenty of offers never mention it.
Convert the benefits you can and be honest about the ones you cannot. Health cover has a taxable value. A shorter commute does not, and it may still matter more.
Where the toolkit goes next
Ten calculators cover the questions that reach most people. The plan runs to many more, all on the same engine, because the fiftieth tool should agree with the first one to the penny.
On the pay side, hourly to salary, day rates for contractors, overtime at enhanced rates, and bonus tax across one month against twelve. On the tax side, self assessment estimates for side income, marriage allowance, the high income child benefit charge, dividend tax for directors, and capital gains.
On leave and rights, paternity and shared parental leave, adoption pay, statutory sick pay, notice periods and settlement agreement values, where the tax treatment of each component decides what you actually receive. On career, contract to permanent conversion, cost of living adjusted moves between UK cities, and the long term cost of a year out.
On the money that sits around a salary, stamp duty with first time buyer relief, mortgage affordability on real lender multiples, Lifetime ISA bonuses, ISA allowance tracking and pension headroom. Pay is only interesting because of what it pays for.
How the figures stay right
Rates, bands and statutory weekly amounts live in one config that every calculator reads. April arrives, the new table goes in, and all ten tools move together. Previous years stay available through the year selector, so a self assessment for last year runs on last year's numbers.
The maths runs in your browser. Your salary is not posted to a server, not logged, and not sold. Saving a scenario needs an account and stores only what you chose to save, which turns your numbers into a baseline you can rerun the next time something changes.
Some situations still need a human. K codes carrying negative allowances, bespoke sacrifice arrangements, the annual allowance taper for very high earners, and anything involving multiple employments at once. The tools flag those spots rather than pretending the answer is simple.
From the blog