UK Take-Home Pay (Salary) Calculator

How to use the take-home pay calculator

Enter your gross annual salary — the amount before any deductions — along with your region (Scotland has different Income Tax bands to the rest of the UK), your student loan plan (or none), and the percentage of your salary you pay into a workplace pension. The calculator then works out your Income Tax, National Insurance, pension contribution and student loan repayment, and shows you exactly what lands in your bank account each month, week and year.

This is one of the most useful calculators for anyone negotiating a new job offer, considering a pay rise, or simply trying to understand where their salary actually goes. A £45,000 salary sounds straightforward until you see how much of it disappears before it reaches your account.

What comes out of your salary

Four things can reduce your gross salary before you see it: pension contributions, Income Tax, National Insurance, and student loan repayments (if applicable). Pension contributions are usually deducted first, directly reducing your taxable salary. Income Tax is then calculated on what's left, using your personal allowance (£12,570, tax-free) and the relevant tax bands — basic rate at 20%, higher rate at 40%, and additional rate at 45% in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, with a more detailed set of bands in Scotland. National Insurance is calculated separately, at 8% on earnings between £12,570 and £50,270, and 2% above that. Student loan repayments, if you have a plan, are then deducted at 9% (or 6% for Postgraduate Loans) of everything you earn above your plan's threshold.

Worked example

Take someone earning £38,000 a year in England, contributing 5% to their pension, with no student loan. Their pension contribution is £1,900, leaving a taxable salary of £36,100. After the £12,570 personal allowance, £23,530 is taxed at 20%, giving an Income Tax bill of around £4,706. National Insurance is charged at 8% on the £23,530 above the £12,570 threshold, adding roughly £1,882. That leaves a net annual income of about £29,512 — or £2,459 a month — from a £38,000 gross salary, once pension, tax and NI are all accounted for.

Add a Plan 2 student loan into the mix and, because £36,100 is above the £28,470 threshold, a further 9% of the £7,630 excess (about £686) would also be deducted, bringing monthly take-home pay down to roughly £2,402.

England, Wales and Northern Ireland vs Scotland

If you work in Scotland, your Income Tax is calculated using the Scottish Government's own bands, which apply on top of the same UK-wide £12,570 personal allowance but use six rate bands rather than three — starting at 19% and rising to 48% for the very highest earners. This means take-home pay for the same gross salary can differ noticeably north and south of the border, particularly for middle and higher earners. National Insurance, by contrast, is set UK-wide and doesn't change based on where you live.

A note on accuracy

This calculator assumes a standard 1257L tax code, one job, and no other income, benefits in kind, or allowances such as Marriage Allowance. It applies pension contributions before tax in the way most workplace net-pay or salary sacrifice schemes work — if your scheme deducts contributions after tax (relief-at-source), your actual take-home figure may differ slightly. For a definitive figure, always check your payslip or HMRC's own online tools.

Related calculators

Want to see the tax breakdown on its own, without pension and student loan deductions? Try our Income Tax calculator. And if you're weighing up a house purchase against your new take-home pay, check our mortgage calculator to see what you could comfortably afford.