This UK take-home pay calculator turns an annual gross salary into estimated net pay for the 2026/27 tax year, using the income tax bands, National Insurance thresholds and student loan repayment thresholds currently published on GOV.UK. It covers both the rest-of-UK bands and the separate Scottish bands, applies the personal allowance taper above £100,000, and models the three pension contribution methods separately because they produce materially different answers.
Arb Digital builds free calculators that show their working, and a salary calculator that hides its assumptions is close to useless. Every rate on this page is stated in the page, the tax year is named next to the result, and the things this tool cannot know — your tax code, benefits in kind, a mid-year start — are set out plainly rather than glossed over. Your payslip and HMRC are the authority here, not this page.
What This UK Take Home Pay Calculator Does
Enter your gross salary and the calculator works through the same sequence a payroll system does. It applies your pension contribution according to the method you select, works out how much personal allowance you are entitled to after any taper, applies income tax band by band, calculates employee National Insurance against its own separate thresholds, adds any student loan repayments, and reports what is left annually, monthly and weekly.
The breakdown bars show where the whole gross salary went — income tax, National Insurance, pension, student loan and take-home — because the total deduction figure is usually more informative than any single line. The monthly and weekly figures are the annual result divided by twelve and by fifty-two, which is what most people actually want to know.
How to Use It
- Enter your annual gross salary. The headline figure in your contract, before anything is taken off.
- Select where you are taxed. Scottish taxpayers have different bands and rates, and at higher salaries the difference runs to thousands of pounds a year.
- Set your pension percentage and method. If you do not know the method, ask payroll — guessing here can misstate your take-home by a large margin.
- Choose your student loan plan. Plan 1, 2, 4, 5 and the postgraduate loan all have different thresholds, and a postgraduate loan runs alongside an undergraduate plan rather than replacing it.
- Compare against your actual payslip. If the figures differ, your tax code is the usual reason, and the payslip is right.
The Rates This Calculator Uses for 2026/27
Every figure below is taken from GOV.UK for the 2026 to 2027 tax year, which runs from 6 April 2026 to 5 April 2027.
Income tax, England, Wales and Northern Ireland. The standard personal allowance is £12,570. Basic rate 20% applies to the first £37,700 of taxable income, higher rate 40% from £37,701 to £125,140, and additional rate 45% above £125,140. See the GOV.UK income tax rates and personal allowances page.
Income tax, Scotland. Six bands rather than three: starter rate 19% from £12,571 to £16,537, basic rate 20% to £29,526, intermediate rate 21% to £43,662, higher rate 42% to £75,000, advanced rate 45% to £125,140, and top rate 48% above that.
Employee National Insurance. Class 1 contributions are charged at 8% on earnings between the primary threshold of £242 a week, £12,570 a year, and the upper earnings limit of £967 a week, £50,270 a year, then at 2% on everything above that. Those are the category A rates on the GOV.UK National Insurance rates and categories page. This is the employee contribution only — your employer pays its own, larger contribution that never appears on your payslip as a deduction.
Student loans. The thresholds on the GOV.UK guide to how much you repay are: Plan 1, £26,900 at 9%; Plan 2, £29,385 at 9%; Plan 4, £33,795 at 9%; Plan 5, £25,000 at 9%; and the postgraduate loan, £21,000 at 6%. Repayment is a percentage of income above the threshold, and the amount you borrowed does not change the percentage.
The £100,000 Trap: Where the Personal Allowance Disappears
Above £100,000 of adjusted net income, the personal allowance is withdrawn at the rate of £1 for every £2 of income above that line. By £125,140 it has gone entirely. This is the single most misunderstood feature of the UK income tax system, and it is why a calculator that ignores it is wrong for exactly the people most likely to be checking.
The consequence is an effective marginal rate spike. In the band between £100,000 and £125,140, every extra £100 of salary is taxed at 40% directly, and it also removes £50 of personal allowance, which is then itself taxed at 40%. That is £40 plus £20, or £60 of tax on £100 of extra earnings — a 60% effective marginal rate, plus 2% National Insurance on top, in a band nominally described as the 40% rate. Above £125,140 the marginal rate falls back to 45% plus 2%, so the sting is confined to that £25,140 window.
This is why a pay rise from £99,000 to £110,000 delivers far less than people expect, and why pension contributions are so often discussed in that income range: a contribution that reduces adjusted net income can pull you back below the taper. This page implements the taper so you can see it, but how you should respond to it is a question for an accountant or a regulated financial adviser, not for a free calculator.
Why the Pension Method Changes the Answer
Three schemes, three different results from the same contribution percentage. Getting this wrong is one of the biggest sources of error in salary calculators.
Salary sacrifice. You formally give up part of your salary and the employer pays it into the pension. Your gross pay is genuinely lower, so it reduces both income tax and National Insurance. This is the most tax-efficient of the three for the employee, and it also reduces the salary figure used for the personal allowance taper.
Net pay arrangement. The contribution comes out of your pay before income tax is calculated, so you get full tax relief at your marginal rate immediately. But National Insurance is charged on your pay before the pension deduction, so there is no NI saving. Compared with salary sacrifice at the same percentage, you keep less.
Relief at source. The contribution is taken from your pay after tax and National Insurance. You pay 80% of the gross contribution and the pension provider reclaims the basic-rate 20% from HMRC and adds it to your pot. Higher and additional-rate taxpayers must claim the rest through Self Assessment, and that extra relief is not modelled here — it arrives later as a tax adjustment rather than as higher take-home pay each month.
What This Page Cannot Know
A salary calculator works from a salary. Payroll works from a tax code, and the gap between those two is where the differences come from.
Your tax code encodes your actual allowance, which may be reduced by untaxed income, unpaid tax from an earlier year, or benefits in kind, or increased by allowances such as the marriage allowance. An emergency or non-cumulative code will produce quite different monthly figures until it is corrected. Benefits in kind — a company car, private medical cover — are taxed through the code and are not modelled here. Mid-year starts and leavers matter because income tax is cumulative across the tax year while National Insurance is calculated separately in each pay period; this page annualises NI, which is a good approximation for a steady salary and a poor one for irregular or bonus-heavy pay. Bonuses, overtime and commission can push a single month into a higher band and then correct themselves later. Nor does this page cover the High Income Child Benefit Charge, self-employment, dividends or savings income, all of which have their own rules.
How This Differs From Our US Salary Tools
Arb Digital publishes several take-home pay calculators and they are not interchangeable. The paycheck take home calculator and the take home pay by state calculator are built on United States federal brackets, FICA and state income taxes, in dollars, with filing statuses. Our income tax calculator is US federal income tax only. None of them contain UK income tax, National Insurance, a personal allowance or student loan plans, and none of their figures transfer to a UK salary. This page is the UK one, and it is the only one of the set that uses pounds and HMRC bands.
Reading Your Payslip Against This Estimate
If your payslip and this page disagree, work through the lines in order. Compare gross pay first, since a salary sacrifice pension makes payslip gross lower than contractual salary. Then check the tax code against the standard allowance. Then check whether the National Insurance letter on your payslip is category A, because other categories carry different rates. Finally, check whether the student loan line matches the plan you selected, since the wrong plan being applied is a common and quietly expensive payroll error.
For planning around the resulting figure, the budget calculator works from net monthly income, the salary to hourly calculator converts an annual figure into an hourly rate for comparison, and the pension calculator looks at what today's contributions build up to. If you are also buying a home, our stamp duty calculator covers the other large UK tax bill in that process.
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Browse Free Tools Talk to Arb DigitalCommon Mistakes to Avoid
- Applying rest-of-UK bands to a Scottish taxpayer — Scotland has six bands and diverges sharply at higher salaries, so the wrong selection can be thousands of pounds out.
- Ignoring the personal allowance taper above £100,000 — the effective marginal rate in that band is around 60% plus National Insurance, not the 40% the band name suggests.
- Assuming all pension schemes are equivalent — salary sacrifice, net pay and relief at source produce different take-home figures from the same percentage.
- Forgetting a postgraduate loan runs alongside an undergraduate plan — both deductions can appear on the same payslip, at different thresholds and different rates.
- Treating any estimate as your actual pay — your tax code, benefits in kind and pay period all change the real figure, and the payslip is what governs.
Related Free Tools From Arb Digital
Use the budget calculator to plan around your net monthly figure and the pension calculator for the long-term side of contributions. UK homebuyers should pair this with the stamp duty calculator. The full free online tools hub has the rest.
Frequently Asked Questions
The 2026 to 2027 tax year, running from 6 April 2026 to 5 April 2027, using the income tax bands, National Insurance thresholds and student loan figures currently published on GOV.UK. Rates and thresholds change at each Budget, so check GOV.UK or HMRC's own calculator before relying on a figure.
Yes. Select Scotland and the calculator applies the Scottish bands: starter rate 19 per cent, basic 20, intermediate 21, higher 42, advanced 45 and top 48 per cent. National Insurance is set UK-wide and does not change between Scotland and the rest of the UK, so only the income tax part differs.
Because the personal allowance is withdrawn by 1 pound for every 2 pounds of income above 100,000, disappearing entirely at 125,140. In that band each extra 100 pounds of salary is taxed at 40 pounds and also strips 50 pounds of allowance which is itself taxed, giving an effective marginal rate of about 60 per cent before National Insurance.
No. It calculates employee Class 1 National Insurance only, which is the deduction that appears on your payslip. Your employer pays a separate and larger contribution on your earnings, but that is a cost to the employer and is never deducted from your pay, so it does not affect your take-home figure.
Yes, and many people do. A postgraduate loan runs alongside an undergraduate plan rather than replacing it, so both deductions can appear on one payslip. They use different thresholds and rates: the postgraduate loan is 6 per cent above 21,000 pounds, while the undergraduate plans are 9 per cent above their own thresholds.
Whichever one your employer actually operates, which payroll or your scheme documents can confirm. Salary sacrifice reduces gross pay before both tax and National Insurance, a net pay arrangement reduces taxable pay but not the pay National Insurance is charged on, and relief at source comes out of net pay with basic-rate relief added by the provider. The same percentage gives different take-home under each.
Most often your tax code, which may be adjusted for benefits in kind, untaxed income or an earlier underpayment. Other causes are a non-standard National Insurance category, a mid-year start, or bonus and overtime pay landing in one period. Income tax is cumulative across the year while National Insurance is worked out per pay period, so a steady salary matches this estimate more closely than irregular pay.
This is an estimate of published 2026/27 rates applied to figures you entered — it is not a statement of what you will be paid, not tax advice, and not a substitute for HMRC's own calculator. It models employee National Insurance only, annualises figures that payroll works out per pay period, and cannot see your tax code or benefits in kind. Rates and thresholds change at each Budget. Check every figure against HMRC guidance on GOV.UK and HMRC's own take-home calculator, and treat your payslip, your payroll department or a qualified accountant as the authority on your actual pay.
