Universal Credit Calculator

Universal Credit (UC) is calculated by adding a standard allowance (based on age and relationship status) plus additional elements for children, housing costs, caring responsibilities and disability. Your payment is then reduced based on your earnings through a taper rate of 55%. The calculator builds the same sum from your household composition, income, housing costs and circumstances, then applies the benefit cap by adding Child Benefit to the award and comparing the total with the cap for your household (£1,835 a month for couples and lone parents outside Greater London and £2,110.25 inside it, or £1,229.42 and £1,413.92 for single adults without children). Households earning £881 or more a month after tax and National Insurance, or getting the health element or a disability or carer benefit, are exempt. The figure it returns is an estimate, and a full assessment by the DWP settles what you actually receive.

The standard allowance for 2026/27 runs at £338.58 a month for a single claimant under 25 and £424.90 once you turn 25. Couples receive £528.34 where both partners are under 25, or £666.97 where at least one partner is 25 or over. A child element is added on top, worth £351.88 for a first child born before 6 April 2017 and £303.94 for a first child born after that date and for every additional child.

Several other elements can be stacked on. Childcare is reimbursed at up to 85% of what you pay, capped at £1,071.09 a month for one child and £1,836.16 for two or more. The limited capability for work element, worth £158.76 a month, has been closed to new claims since 3 April 2017 and is only paid to people who already had it. The health element, for limited capability for work and work-related activity, pays £217.26 for awards made from 6 April 2026 or £429.80 at the protected rate, a split introduced by the Universal Credit Act 2025 that keeps the older figure for people already receiving it, those meeting the Severe Conditions Criteria and the terminally ill. Carers add £209.34, and the housing element follows the LHA rate for your area.

Earnings do not cut the award pound for pound. The work allowance lets you earn a set amount before the taper applies, £710 a month if your UC includes no housing element or £427 a month if it does, and every £1 above that line costs you 55p of Universal Credit. Only claimants with responsibility for children or limited capability for work get a work allowance at all. Everyone else is tapered from the first pound earned. The taper produces effective marginal tax rates of 75-85% for some workers, a long-standing welfare-to-work problem.

Savings count as well as wages. Capital of £6,000 or less is ignored. Between £6,000 and £16,000 it generates tariff income, trimming the award by £4.35 a month for every £250, or part of £250, held above £6,000. Capital of more than £16,000 ends the claim entirely. The definition is broad, taking in savings, ISAs, shares and other investments, and property other than the home you live in. Your main home, personal possessions, pension pots and pension rights, the assets of a business you run and certain disability-related capital are left out.

Self-employment brings its own rule. Once you have been trading for 12 months or more, the minimum income floor assumes you earn 35 times the National Minimum Wage each week, £444.85 in 2026/27, even if the business made less. A start-up exemption covers the first 12 months where self-employment is your main source of income. Two other traps catch people regularly. Childcare is reimbursed only after you have paid the nursery, which leaves parents funding the gap themselves, and the surplus earnings rule pushes an unusually large month's pay into the following month's calculation.

Claimants moved across from tax credits, ESA, Income Support, JSA or Housing Benefit under managed migration receive Transitional Protection, meaning the new UC award cannot start lower than the benefits it replaced. The difference arrives as a top-up that erodes over time. It is only given to people who claimed UC after receiving a migration notice, not to those who moved voluntarily or because their circumstances changed. Managed migration has now largely been completed: tax credits ended on 5 April 2025, the DWP sent migration notices to the remaining legacy claimants during 2024 and 2025, and the legacy means-tested benefits were due to close by the end of March 2026, with a short extension for a small number of income-related ESA and Housing Benefit cases.