Take-Home Pay Calculator 2026-27

Your take-home pay is what remains after all statutory deductions are subtracted from your gross salary. In the UK, these deductions include income tax (based on your tax code and banding), employee National Insurance (8% and 2%), workplace pension contributions (typically 5% for auto-enrolment) and student loan repayments (if applicable). Income tax runs at 20%, 40% and 45% once the £12,570 Personal Allowance has been used up, with the 20% band covering the next £37,700 of income. Employee NI is charged at 8% on earnings between £12,570 and £50,270 and at 2% above that.

This calculator applies deductions in the correct order: pension contributions are deducted before tax if made via salary sacrifice, or after tax if made via net-pay arrangement. Student loan repayments are calculated at 9% of income above the relevant plan threshold (6% for Postgraduate Loans). Plan 2 takes 9% above £29,385, Plan 5 takes 9% above £25,000 and the Postgraduate Loan takes 6% above £21,000. The full stacking order is worth knowing. Salary sacrifice (pension, cycle-to-work, EV scheme) comes off first, then income tax through the PAYE bands, then employee NI at 8%/2%, then any student loan, and finally any remaining pension contributions made through relief at source.

The result shows your monthly and annual take-home pay, with a full breakdown of each deduction. You can toggle pension contributions (including salary sacrifice), student loan plans, bonus payments and Scottish tax bands to see how they affect your net income, or flip the calculator into reverse mode to find the gross salary you would need for a target take-home figure. On a £35,000 salary the typical take-home is around £27,800 a year, or £2,317 a month.

Salary sacrifice is the most powerful of the levers because it reduces the base for both income tax and NI. Every £100 sacrificed saves £32 for a basic-rate taxpayer or £42 for a higher-rate taxpayer, against the £20-40 saved on a relief-at-source pension contribution of the same size, and employers often share their own NI saving back. The other legal ways to lift take-home pay are the cycle-to-work scheme, which saves 32-42% on a bike costing up to £1,000, and an electric car through salary sacrifice, where the benefit-in-kind rate is just 4% in 2026/27 (it was 2% until April 2025) and rises towards 9% by 2029/30, still cheap next to personal contract hire. Two traps are worth avoiding. Earning above £100k triggers the Personal Allowance taper and an effective 60% rate, and ad-hoc P11D benefits are often less tax-efficient than the equivalent cash.

UK PAYE is cumulative across the tax year, which runs from 6 April to 5 April, and that explains why the first payslip of a new year can look odd. At the start of the year your tax-free allowance is fresh, and each month's tax is the tax due on your cumulative pay to date, less the tax already paid. A bonus in April therefore attracts more apparent tax than the same bonus in March, though it balances out over the year. Your tax code sets the allowance: the standard L-code, for example 1257L, gives the full allowance, while a K-code such as K500 means your deductions exceed your allowances and extra tax is collected.

Take-home pay can shift unexpectedly for several reasons. A pay rise mid-year changes your tax code and may push you into a higher band. Bonus payments are taxed as one-off lump sums and then adjusted through the rest of the year. Changing your pension contribution alters take-home immediately. Crossing a student loan threshold adds a 9% deduction above £29,385 on Plan 2. The High Income Child Benefit Charge starts to bite above £60,000. Childcare voucher schemes change the PAYE calculation, and a P11D benefit such as a company car or private health insurance increases your taxable income through an adjusted tax code.