UK Take-Home Pay Calculator (2026/27)

Worked example

How this 2026/27 UK take-home pay calculator works

This calculator turns a gross annual salary into the amount that actually lands in your bank account for the 2026/27 tax year. It uses the income tax rates for England, Wales and Northern Ireland (often called rUK), so if you pay Scottish income tax your tax figure will differ slightly. The four deductions it models are income tax, employee National Insurance, an optional student loan repayment, and an optional workplace pension contribution.

The order in which those deductions are applied matters, and it is the single biggest reason two calculators can disagree. This tool treats your pension contribution as a salary sacrifice, which is the most common arrangement for modern workplace schemes. Under salary sacrifice you formally give up part of your gross salary in exchange for an employer pension contribution, so the sacrificed amount is removed before income tax, National Insurance and student loan are calculated. That is why a 5% pension entry reduces your tax and NI bill as well as your take-home pay, and why salary sacrifice is more efficient than a contribution taken from net pay.

Once the pension has been sacrificed, the calculator finds your personal allowance, subtracts it to get taxable income, and applies the 20%, 40% and 45% bands. Separately it applies the 8% and 2% National Insurance rates to the same adjusted pay, and then any student loan repayment at 9% or 6% of pay above your plan threshold. The three results are added together and taken off your adjusted pay to give net annual pay, which is divided by twelve for a monthly figure.

A few deliberate simplifications keep the result clean and comparable. It assumes you are under State Pension age (so National Insurance applies), that your only income is this salary, that you use the standard tax code 1257L with no other adjustments, and that student loan repayments are calculated on an annual basis rather than the strict payslip-by-payslip method HMRC uses in real time. For a single steady salary those methods produce the same annual outcome. If you have multiple income sources, benefits in kind such as a company car, or a non-standard tax code, treat the figure as a close estimate rather than an exact payslip.

Income tax and the personal allowance taper

For 2026/27 the tax-free personal allowance is £12,570. Income above that is taxed in three bands, measured on your taxable income after the allowance: 20% on the first £37,700, 40% on the slice from £37,700 up to £125,140, and 45% above £125,140. In terms of total salary that means the higher rate starts at £50,270 and the additional rate at £125,140. These thresholds are frozen until 5 April 2031, so as wages rise more people are pulled into higher bands, an effect often called fiscal drag.

The detail that catches many people out is the personal allowance taper. Once your income passes £100,000, your £12,570 allowance is cut by £1 for every £2 of income above that line. By £125,140 the allowance has vanished entirely. Because you lose tax-free allowance and pay 40% tax on the income that triggers the loss, every extra pound earned between £100,000 and £125,140 is effectively taxed at 60%. This calculator reproduces that band automatically: if your adjusted pay falls in that range you will see the marginal sting in the results.

This is exactly where pension salary sacrifice becomes a powerful lever. Because the sacrifice reduces your income before the taper is measured, contributing enough to bring adjusted pay back under £100,000 can restore your full personal allowance. Someone earning £110,000 who sacrifices £10,000 into a pension effectively gets £6,000 of tax relief on that contribution, because they escape the 60% zone. Try entering a salary just over £100,000 and adjusting the pension percentage to watch the effect.

Two points are worth flagging. First, the taper is based on adjusted net income, which for most employees is salary after pension sacrifice, but can also be reduced by Gift Aid donations that this calculator does not model. Second, these are rUK rates. Scotland sets its own bands and rates, including a 19% starter rate, a 21% intermediate rate and higher top rates, so a Scottish taxpayer on the same salary usually pays a different amount of income tax while paying identical National Insurance.

National Insurance and student loan repayments

Employee National Insurance for 2026/27 uses two rates on your adjusted pay. You pay 8% on earnings between the primary threshold of £12,570 and the upper earnings limit of £50,270, and just 2% on everything above £50,270. Unlike income tax, National Insurance has no equivalent of the personal allowance taper, so the marginal NI rate actually falls from 8% to 2% once you cross £50,270. This is why a high earner keeps a larger share of each extra pound of NI-able pay than a mid earner does, and it partly offsets the higher income tax rates above that point.

National Insurance is charged on your pay after salary sacrifice, which is another reason sacrifice schemes are efficient: the pension contribution never appears as NI-able earnings. Note that the calculator models the employee side only. Your employer pays a separate secondary contribution that does not reduce your take-home pay and is not shown here.

Student loan repayments sit on top of tax and NI and are worked out as a flat percentage of income above a plan-specific threshold, again measured on adjusted pay. For 2026/27 the annual thresholds are £26,900 for Plan 1, £29,385 for Plan 2, £25,000 for Plan 5 (English courses started on or after 1 August 2023, which entered repayment for the first time on 6 April 2026), and £33,795 for Plan 4 (the Scottish plan), each repaid at 9% of income above the threshold. A Postgraduate Loan repays at 6% of income above £21,000. If you hold both an undergraduate and a postgraduate loan you can be repaying on both at once, so your combined deduction can reach 15% of income above the relevant thresholds; this tool lets you model one plan at a time.

Because repayment is tied to income rather than the outstanding balance, the amount you repay each year does not depend on how much you borrowed. A Plan 2 borrower on £42,750 repays 9% of £13,365, which is £1,202.85 a year or about £100 a month, whether their balance is £20,000 or £60,000. Salary sacrifice reduces this too, since the 9% is applied to pay after the pension has been removed. When your income drops below the threshold, repayments stop automatically.

Turning the net figure into a monthly budget

The headline most people care about is the monthly number, because that is what has to cover rent or mortgage, bills and savings. This calculator produces the monthly figure by dividing annual net pay by twelve, which gives a smooth average. Real payslips can wobble slightly from month to month because PAYE and student loan deductions are recalculated on a cumulative basis, and National Insurance is assessed each pay period rather than annually. Over a full year in steady employment the totals reconcile, so the annual figure is the reliable one for comparing offers.

When you use the result, remember what it does and does not include. It is pay after income tax, National Insurance, student loan and pension. It does not subtract things that vary by person, such as workplace benefit contributions taken from net pay, season ticket loans, cycle-to-work deductions, or private health cover reported as a benefit in kind. A benefit in kind is especially worth watching, because a company car or medical insurance is taxed by adjusting your tax code, which would lower your take-home below the figure shown here.

The calculator is most useful for scenario testing. Compare two job offers by entering each gross salary and reading the net difference, which is usually smaller than the gross gap once higher-rate tax and the personal allowance taper are factored in. Or test how much a pay rise is really worth after deductions: a jump from £48,000 to £52,000 crosses into the 40% band, so the take-home increase is noticeably less than £4,000. You can also size a pension contribution: increasing the percentage shows exactly how much take-home you give up today for each pound added to your pension, and around the £100,000 mark that trade-off becomes strikingly favourable because of the reclaimed personal allowance.

Finally, treat every figure as an estimate for planning rather than formal tax advice. The rates and thresholds are the published 2026/27 values for England, Wales and Northern Ireland, but individual circumstances, Scottish tax status, marriage allowance transfers and other reliefs can move the real number. For anything with financial consequences, check your own tax code and payslip or speak to a qualified adviser.

Frequently asked questions