UK Take-Home Pay Calculator

Archived historical, non-current snapshot — dated July 9, 2026 (2026-07-09). The personal allowance, income-tax bands, National Insurance thresholds, and student-loan repayment assumptions described below may not reflect current UK tax rules. Check authoritative sources for the applicable period before relying on this estimate.

This UK take-home pay calculator turns a gross annual salary into an estimated annual and monthly net pay figure. It follows the exact logic in the calculator: subtract a pension percentage, calculate income tax for the selected region, calculate employee National Insurance from the gross salary, add any selected student loan repayment, and show the salary left after those deductions. The output is most useful when you want a transparent planning number for a job offer, pay rise, pension contribution change, or student loan scenario.

The calculator is not a full payroll engine. It does not know your tax code, prior pay in the tax year, benefits in kind, salary sacrifice agreements, bonus timing, overtime, childcare vouchers, payroll giving, employer pension contributions, attachment orders, or HMRC coding notices. It also models only one student loan plan at a time. If you need to isolate the NI portion, use the UK National Insurance calculator. If you are checking borrowing or budgeting capacity, compare the net figure with the budget calculator and debt-to-income calculator.

How to use this calculator

Enter gross annual salary before tax and deductions. Choose the tax region that applies to your earned income: England, Wales or Northern Ireland, or Scotland. Add the pension contribution as a percentage of gross salary. Then choose a student loan plan if one applies, or leave the field set to none.

The results shows annual take-home pay as the primary figure and monthly take-home pay as a supporting item. It also itemizes income tax, National Insurance, pension contribution, and student loan repayment when a loan amount is due. The annual summary repeats the gross salary, shows the tax-free personal allowance used by the income tax calculation, totals all deductions, and reports the effective deduction rate as a percentage of gross salary.

Formula used by the calculator

The pension is calculated first:

$\text{pension} = \text{gross salary} \times \frac{\text{pension percent}}{100}$

The taxable pay used for income tax is gross salary minus pension, floored at zero:

$\text{taxable pay} = \max(0,\text{gross salary} - \text{pension})$

The personal allowance starts at £12,570 and is tapered by £1 for every £2 of taxable pay above £100,000:

$\text{allowance} = \max(0,12570 - \frac{\max(0,\text{taxable pay} - 100000)}{2})$

Income tax is then applied to taxable pay after allowance. For England, Wales and Northern Ireland, the encoded bands are 20% on the first £37,700 of taxable income after allowance, 40% on the next slice up to £112,570, and 45% above that. For Scotland, the encoded post-allowance bands are:

Employee National Insurance is calculated from gross salary, not taxable pay:

$\text{NI} = \max(0,\min(\text{gross salary},50270) - 12570) \times 0.08 + \max(0,\text{gross salary} - 50270) \times 0.02$

The selected student loan repayment is also calculated from gross salary. Plan 1 uses £26,065 at 9%, Plan 2 uses £28,470 at 9%, Plan 4 uses £31,395 at 9%, and postgraduate uses £21,000 at 6%. If no plan is selected, loan repayment is zero.

Finally, take-home pay is:

$\text{take-home pay} = \text{gross salary} - \text{pension} - \text{income tax} - \text{NI} - \text{student loan}$

Monthly take-home is the annual take-home amount divided by 12.

Checking the primary result

Use the default-style scenario: £35,000 gross annual salary, England, Wales or Northern Ireland, 5% pension, and no student loan. Pension is £35,000 × 5% = £1,750. Taxable pay is therefore £35,000 - £1,750 = £33,250.

Because taxable pay is below £100,000, the personal allowance stays at £12,570. Income taxable after allowance is £33,250 - £12,570 = £20,680. Under the encoded England, Wales and Northern Ireland bands, that whole amount sits in the 20% band, so income tax is £4,136.00.

National Insurance uses the gross salary. The main NI band is £35,000 - £12,570 = £22,430. At 8%, NI is £1,794.40. There is no additional NI band because gross salary is below £50,270, and there is no student loan repayment because the plan is none.

The annual take-home pay is £35,000 - £1,750 - £4,136 - £1,794.40 = £27,319.60. Monthly take-home is £27,319.60 ÷ 12 = £2,276.63. Total deductions are £7,680.40, and the effective deduction rate is about 21.9% of gross salary.

Rates change by tax year

Income tax bands, Scottish rates, the personal allowance taper, NI rates, and student loan thresholds can change. This page describes the values currently encoded in the calculator component, including the £12,570 personal allowance and £50,270 NI upper limit. GOV.UK and HMRC publish official tax rates and payroll thresholds; check the year you are modelling before making salary, pension, or repayment decisions.

The pension treatment is especially important. The calculator reduces taxable pay for income tax, but it does not reduce the gross salary used for National Insurance or student loan repayments. Some real workplace pensions operate through relief at source, some through net pay, and some through salary sacrifice. Those methods can lead to different payslip results even when the headline contribution percentage is the same.

Practical uses

Use this calculator to compare offers on a like-for-like annual basis, test a pension percentage before changing payroll instructions, or see whether a student loan plan materially affects monthly cash flow. If you are deciding whether an extra monthly payment is affordable, pair the monthly result with the loan calculator or mortgage calculator. If you want to compare pay quoted hourly, weekly, monthly, or yearly, convert it first with the annual salary calculator.

Common mistakes

• Entering monthly pay even though the field asks for annual salary.
• Assuming the pension percentage reduces every deduction. In this calculator it reduces income tax, but not NI or student loan.
• Choosing Scotland for residence when the relevant question is the income tax regime for earned income.
• Forgetting that student loan plans have different thresholds and that this calculator models only one plan at a time.
• Treating the output as a payslip guarantee instead of an annualized estimate.

Sources

• GOV.UK, Income Tax rates and Personal Allowances — official UK income tax bands and personal allowance guidance.
• GOV.UK, Rates and thresholds for employers 2024 to 2025 — PAYE, National Insurance, and student loan payroll thresholds for the referenced year.
• GOV.UK, National Insurance: how much you pay — overview of employee National Insurance rates and thresholds.