Take Home Pay Calculator

What is take-home pay?

Take-home pay is the money you actually get in your bank account on payday after deductions are taken off your salary. This includes Income Tax, National Insurance, pension payments, student loan repayments and any other deductions. It is also called net pay. The salary you see in a job advert or employment contract is normally your gross salary, which means the amount before deductions. Your real take-home pay will be lower. For many workers, the difference can be a few hundred pounds each month. That is why it is useful to check your take-home pay before planning your budget, accepting a job offer or comparing two roles.

How take-home pay is calculated

Take-home pay is worked out by starting with your gross salary and then taking off the main deductions one by one:

Take-home pay = Gross salary − Income Tax − National Insurance − pension − student loan

The calculator above uses the verified 2026/27 tax and National Insurance thresholds.

For example, if you earn £35,000 a year, the first £12,570 is covered by the Personal Allowance, so no Income Tax is charged on that part. The remaining £22,430 is taxed at the basic rate of 20%, which gives £4,486 in Income Tax. National Insurance is charged at 8% on earnings between £12,570 and £50,270. On a £35,000 salary, this comes to £1,794. If there are no pension or student loan deductions, your yearly take-home pay would be £28,720. That works out at about £2,393 a month.

What’s taken off your pay?

Most UK employees have a few deductions taken from their gross salary before the money reaches their bank account. The main ones are Income Tax, National Insurance, pension contributions and student loan repayments. The calculator above includes all of these, so you can see a clearer estimate of your real take-home pay.

Income Tax: Income Tax is only charged on the part of your income above the Personal Allowance. For 2026/27, the Personal Allowance is £12,570. In England, Wales and Northern Ireland, income above this is taxed in bands. You pay 20% on earnings up to £50,270, 40% up to £125,140, and 45% on anything above that. If you earn more than £100,000, your Personal Allowance starts to shrink. It falls by £1 for every £2 you earn over £100,000. This creates a much higher effective tax rate between £100,000 and £125,140.

National Insurance: Employees pay Class 1 National Insurance separately from Income Tax. For 2026/27, you pay 8% on earnings between £12,570 and £50,270. Anything above £50,270 is charged at 2%. National Insurance also counts towards your State Pension and some other benefits. It is not worked out using your tax code.

Pension contributions: Workplace pension payments reduce the amount you take home each month, but they can also lower the tax you pay. The way this works depends on your pension scheme. Salary sacrifice and net pay schemes take pension payments before tax. Relief at source works differently by adding basic-rate tax relief into your pension. This means the real cost of paying into a pension can be lower than the amount shown on your payslip.

Student loan repayments: Student loan repayments only start once your income goes above the threshold for your plan. Most student loan plans charge 9% on the income above the threshold. A Postgraduate Loan is charged at 6%. For 2026/27, the thresholds are £26,900 for Plan 1, £29,385 for Plan 2, £33,795 for Plan 4 and £25,000 for Plan 5.

2026/27 Income Tax rates and thresholds

These are the Income Tax bands for England, Wales and Northern Ireland for the 2026/27 tax year.

Your Personal Allowance starts to reduce once you earn more than £100,000. It goes down by £1 for every £2 you earn above that level, and it disappears completely at £125,140. National Insurance is worked out separately. You pay 8% on earnings between £12,570 and £50,270, then 2% on anything above £50,270. If your pay is close to a tax band, a pay rise or pension change can affect your monthly take-home pay. The salary optimiser can show how those changes move your final figure.

If you live in Scotland

Scotland has its own Income Tax bands, set by the Scottish Government. Instead of three main rates, Scotland uses six bands. These include a 19% starter rate, 20% basic rate, 21% intermediate rate, 42% higher rate, 45% advanced rate and 48% top rate. National Insurance is still the same across the UK. To get your Scottish take-home pay, choose Scotland in the calculator above or use the Scotland take-home pay calculator.

How accurate is this calculator?

This calculator uses 2026/27 rates and thresholds from official sources, including gov.uk, HMRC and the Scottish Government. The figures are also checked against worked examples, so the result should give you a close estimate of your take-home pay. Still, your actual payslip may be slightly different. This can happen if you have a different tax code, taxable benefits like a company car, bonus adjustments, backdated pay or any other one-off changes. Unless you change the details, the calculator assumes you are on the standard 1257L tax code, have the full Personal Allowance and do not receive any taxable benefits. This calculator is for employees paid through PAYE. If you are self-employed, your Income Tax and National Insurance are worked out in a different way, so these results will not match your position. The figures are only an estimate and should not be treated as financial advice.