UK Take-Home Pay Calculator
Enter your salary and see what actually lands in your account — with the working shown line by line, the rate your next pound is taxed at, and a warning if you are sitting near a threshold that costs you money.
Enter your salary to see your take-home pay.
Nothing is filled in for you, and nothing you type leaves your browser.
Take-home pay
Bonus month
Every other month
Where your pay goes
Your marginal rate what each extra pound is taxed at, across the whole range
Worth knowing
What a pension contribution would do
The same contribution, three ways most people never get to choose — but it is worth knowing which you are on
The working
Cost to your employer not deducted from you — useful when you are negotiating
Across the border
Your bonus month why the deduction looks wrong, and when it settles
Figures are estimates for the 2026/27 tax year and assume you are an employee paid monthly under PAYE for the whole year. Nothing you type here leaves your device. See the assumptions in full.
How this calculator works
Your payslip is the result of three separate sums that run in a fixed order, and most confusion about take-home pay comes from not knowing that order. This calculator follows it exactly.
- Salary sacrifice comes off first. If your pension is a sacrifice arrangement, your contractual salary is genuinely reduced. Everything that follows is worked out on the lower figure — which is why sacrifice saves National Insurance and the other two pension methods do not.
- Income tax is worked out on what is left, after your Personal Allowance, using the bands for where you live. Scotland has six bands; England, Wales and Northern Ireland have three.
- National Insurance ignores your pension unless it is salary sacrifice, and ignores your tax code entirely. It is charged on your gross pay for the period, at 8% between £12,570 and £50,270 and 2% above that.
- Student loan repayments are 9% of everything above your plan’s threshold — 6% for a Postgraduate Loan — calculated on the same earnings figure National Insurance uses.
A worked example: £45,000 with a Plan 2 loan
Take someone on £45,000 in England, contributing 5% to a net pay pension, repaying a Plan 2 student loan.
| Step | Amount |
|---|---|
| Gross salary | £45,000.00 |
| Pension, 5% — reduces taxable pay but not NI | −£2,250.00 |
| Personal Allowance | −£12,570.00 |
| Taxable at 20% | £30,180.00 |
| Income tax | £6,036.00 |
| National Insurance, 8% of £32,430 (pension ignored) | £2,594.40 |
| Plan 2 loan, 9% above £29,385 | £1,405.35 |
| Take-home | £32,714.25 |
That is £2,726.19 a month. The part worth noticing: the next £1,000 of salary is taxed at 20%, has 8% National Insurance taken, and loses 9% to the student loan — so £630 of it reaches the bank. A pay rise is worth considerably less than it looks, and no headline figure tells you that.
The thresholds that actually change your pay in 2026/27
Almost every unpleasant surprise on a payslip happens at one of these lines. Personal tax thresholds are now frozen until April 2031, so pay rises keep pushing more people over them.
| Line | 2026/27 | What happens when you cross it |
|---|---|---|
| Personal Allowance | £12,570 | Income tax starts |
| NI primary threshold | £12,570 | 8% National Insurance starts |
| Higher rate | £50,270 | Tax jumps to 40%, NI drops to 2% — net 42% |
| Child Benefit charge | £60,000 | Child Benefit starts being clawed back |
| Child Benefit gone | £80,000 | All of it repaid through the charge |
| Allowance taper | £100,000 | 60% effective rate begins; free childcare and Tax-Free Childcare stop dead |
| Allowance exhausted | £125,140 | Additional rate; marginal rate falls back to 47% |
The £100,000 line is the sharpest edge in the UK system. Between £100,000 and £125,140 you lose £1 of Personal Allowance for every £2 you earn, so each extra pound is effectively taxed at 60% — 62% once National Insurance is counted. If you also have children in nursery, crossing that line ends Tax-Free Childcare and the funded hours completely, with no taper. A parent earning £100,001 can be several thousand pounds worse off than one earning £99,999. A pension contribution is the usual way back under, because it reduces the adjusted net income all of these tests use.
Three ways your pension can be taken, and why it matters
Employers choose one of three arrangements, and they are not equivalent. Same contribution, same pension pot, different amount left in your pocket.
- Salary sacrifice. Your salary is contractually reduced and your employer pays the money in. You save income tax and National Insurance, and your employer saves their 15% too — some pass that saving on, so it is worth asking.
- Net pay arrangement. The contribution comes out of your pay before tax is worked out. You get full tax relief at your top rate automatically, but no NI saving.
- Relief at source. The contribution comes out of your pay after tax, and your provider claims 20% back from HMRC. If you are a higher or additional rate taxpayer, the rest of your relief is not given automatically — you have to claim it through Self Assessment or by asking HMRC to change your tax code. A great many people never do, and quietly overpay tax for years.
The calculator shows all three side by side. If you are on relief at source and paying higher rate, it tells you exactly how much you are owed.
Common questions
Why is my actual payslip a few pence different?
National Insurance is worked out per pay period, not per year, and HMRC’s monthly thresholds (£1,048 and £4,189) are rounded versions of the annual ones. Twelve monthly calculations therefore differ from one annual calculation by well under a pound a year. Student loan repayments are also rounded down to whole pounds each month. This calculator works annually, so treat pennies as noise.
Why was my bonus taxed at what looks like 50%?
Usually it was not. Income tax under PAYE is cumulative: each month HMRC works out the tax due on everything you have earned so far and takes the difference. A large bonus temporarily pushes your year-to-date pay into a higher band, so that month’s deduction is heavy, and the following months are lighter as it corrects. Over a full year you pay the same income tax wherever the bonus fell. National Insurance works the opposite way: it is recalculated from scratch every month and never corrected, so a lump sum pushes most of itself above the monthly upper earnings limit, where the rate drops from 8% to 2%. That means a bonus paid in one go usually costs you less NI than the same money spread evenly across the year. Enter a bonus above and the calculator shows the month-by-month picture and what the timing is worth.
Does a pay rise ever leave me worse off?
Not from income tax alone — bands only apply to the pounds above each threshold. But the cliff edges are real: crossing £100,000 with a child in nursery can cost more than the rise is worth, and the Child Benefit charge between £60,000 and £80,000 takes back a fixed sum regardless. The calculator flags both.
I live in Scotland. What is different?
Income tax only. Scotland has six bands from 19% to 48%, set by the Scottish Parliament. National Insurance, student loans and the Personal Allowance are UK-wide. For 2026/27 the starter and basic thresholds rose, so Scottish taxpayers earning below about £33,500 pay slightly less than they would elsewhere in the UK, and everyone above that pays more — roughly £1,750 more at £60,000. Tick Scotland and the comparison appears automatically.
Which student loan plan am I on?
Plan 1 if you started before September 2012, or studied in Northern Ireland. Plan 2 in England or Wales from September 2012 to July 2023. Plan 5 in England for courses starting August 2023 or later — 2026/27 is the first year Plan 5 repayments are collected. Plan 4 if you studied in Scotland. A Postgraduate Loan is repaid on top of any of these, at 6%. If you hold two undergraduate plans you only make one deduction, against the lower threshold.
Should I overpay my student loan?
For most people, no. It behaves like a graduate tax: repayment depends on income, not on the balance, and anything outstanding is written off after 25 years on Plan 1, 30 on Plans 2 and 4, and 40 on Plan 5. Overpaying only helps if you are on course to clear it in full well before write-off. That is a genuinely individual calculation, and worth taking advice on.
What does my tax code mean?
The number is your tax-free allowance with the last digit removed, so 1257L is £12,570. BR taxes everything at basic rate, usually because it is a second job. D0 and D1 apply higher and additional rate to everything. A K code means deductions exceed your allowance — typically a company car or unpaid tax from an earlier year — so the amount is added to your taxable pay instead. An S prefix means Scottish rates, a C prefix Welsh. W1, M1 or X on the end means it is being applied non-cumulatively, which usually corrects itself once HMRC catches up.
Is salary sacrifice about to change?
Yes, but not yet. At the Autumn Budget in November 2025 the government announced that from April 2029 only the first £2,000 sacrificed into a pension each year will be free of National Insurance. Above that, both you and your employer will pay NI as normal. Income tax relief is unaffected. Nothing changes before then, but if you sacrifice more than £2,000 the calculator shows what it would cost at today’s rates.
Assumptions, and what this does not cover
Every calculator makes simplifications. These are ours, stated openly.
- Figures are for the 2026/27 tax year (6 April 2026 to 5 April 2027) and assume you are employed for all of it on a steady salary.
- Income tax is settled on an annual basis, which is where cumulative PAYE lands by the end of the year. National Insurance and student loan repayments are worked out month by month, because that is how payroll charges them and neither is corrected at year end — so entering a bonus changes the annual total, not just its timing.
- A bonus is treated as non-pensionable unless you choose otherwise. If you do put part or all of it into your pension, it uses the same pension method selected above, and the whole contribution lands in the month the bonus is paid.
- Real payroll can still differ by pence, mostly from rounding within each pay run.
- National Insurance assumes category A — the standard letter. Apprentices under 25, employees under 21 and veterans use different employer rates.
- Employer National Insurance ignores the Employment Allowance, which some small employers can claim.
- A second employment is not modelled. Each employer applies its own NI threshold, so two jobs are not the same as one salary of the combined size.
- The High Income Child Benefit Charge uses your adjusted net income. It is assessed on the higher earner in a couple, so if your partner earns more, the charge is theirs.
- Self-employment, dividends, savings interest and capital gains are not included.
- Pension contributions are assumed to be within the annual allowance, and no tapered or money purchase annual allowance is applied.
Rates checked against HMRC, the House of Commons Library briefing on direct taxes for 2026/27, the Scottish Government’s Scottish Income Tax technical factsheet of 13 January 2026, and the GOV.UK Child Benefit rates guidance. Last verified 30 July 2026. Rates are reviewed and updated every April.
These are estimates, not advice. PlainPound is a free tool for working out roughly where you stand. It cannot see your tax code history, your P11D, or anything else HMRC knows about you. Do not make a significant financial decision on the strength of it — speak to a qualified adviser or check with HMRC directly.
Related tools
- Salary sacrifice calculator — what sacrificing really costs you, and what it puts in your pension.
- Maternity pay planner — month-by-month household cash flow through maternity leave.