Your monthly or weekly take home pay after every UK deduction.
Your details
Take-home (monthly)
£2,247.47
£26,970 per year
Per month
| Gross pay | £2,916.67 |
| Income tax | − £373.83 |
| National Insurance | − £149.53 |
| Pension | − £145.83 |
| Student loan | − £0.00 |
| Take-home | £2,247.47 |
Interactive scenarios
Tax and deductions, your way
Tax year
Region
Pay schedule
Salary £45,000
Net (monthly)
£2,806
Income tax (monthly)
£541
NI (monthly)
£216
Effective rate
20.2%
The full guide
Worked examples with real figures, the order payroll applies them in, and the traps that catch people out.
Rent, direct debits and childcare all come out of net pay, so net pay is the only number worth budgeting against. Annual salary tells you almost nothing about the fourteenth of the month.
Shift work, four weekly pay and variable hours make it worse, because two consecutive payslips rarely match. Run the pattern you are actually paid on and you get a figure you can build a standing order around.
Deductions are not a flat set that each take a bite of the same cake. They run in sequence, and the sequence decides the cost of every one after the first.
Pension goes first under salary sacrifice, leaving gross pay before tax and National Insurance ever see it. Under relief at source it leaves net pay instead and HMRC tops the pot up. Same percentage on paper, different payslip.
Income tax then applies band by band against the tax code. National Insurance follows, worked out per pay period rather than across the year. Student loan sits on top of all of it and never reduces taxable pay.
Change the order and the answer changes. That is why a payslip with the same gross as a colleague's can pay a different net.
Pay flow
Gross, pension, tax, National Insurance, net
£35,000 paid monthly gives twelve payments near £2,277. The same salary paid every four weeks gives thirteen payments near £2,101, and one month a year carries two of them.
The yearly total is identical. The cash flow is not, and a budget built on the wrong one breaks in the month with the short gap between paydays.
Overtime lands on top of a normal month, so it is taxed at the rate of the band it falls into rather than your average rate. Twelve hours at time and a half on a basic rate salary hands back roughly two thirds.
Worked payslip
Gross to net, line by line
Sample payslip
Month 06 · 2025/26Gross pay
£2,916.67
Pension (5%)
£145.83
Taxable pay
£2,770.84
Income tax
£373.83
National Insurance
£149.52
Net pay
£2,247.66
New pay stacks on top of old pay, so it is charged at the rate of the band it lands in rather than your average rate. A £3,000 rise that crosses the higher rate threshold can hand over roughly £1,240 of itself.
Run the current salary, note the net. Run the new one, note the net. The difference between those two figures is the only number worth celebrating.
Then route part of the rise into the pension. Take home barely moves, the pot jumps and the tax bill falls. On the wrong side of a threshold that trade is close to free money.
A pound in the pot costs a basic rate taxpayer eighty pence of take home and a higher rate taxpayer sixty. Inside the allowance taper it can cost forty. The band you sit in sets the price.
Salary sacrifice removes the contribution from gross pay, so it avoids National Insurance as well as income tax. Relief at source takes it from net pay and HMRC adds the basic rate back, leaving higher rate taxpayers to claim the rest through self assessment.
Employer matching outweighs a small salary difference within a couple of years, and the gap keeps widening for the rest of a working life.
Where each pound goes
Where each pound of salary lands
A tax code change mid year. HMRC adjusts the code, payroll applies it, and the letter explaining it rarely gets read. Check the code on the payslip against the one you expect.
A taxable benefit such as private medical cover. It shrinks the allowance, so a perk raises the tax bill and take home falls in the month it starts.
A switch to salary sacrifice. Gross drops before anything else, which changes every line beneath it and can affect mortgage affordability too.
A bonus month. Income tax evens out across the year through the cumulative system. National Insurance never does.
Sixty payslips turn small monthly differences into serious money. A £40 monthly gap is £2,400 across five years before anything grows.
Pension shows it hardest. Two extra percent on £45,000, matched by an employer and topped by relief, adds close to £2,000 a year to the pot. Compound that for thirty years at a modest rate and it clears six figures.
Multiply the monthly gap by sixty for the cash answer, then apply growth to the yearly pension gap for the long one.
Leave window
The same decision, five years apart
Rates, bands and thresholds follow published HMRC and gov.uk figures for the 2025/26 tax year, held in one table that every tool reads. April arrives, the table changes, and the results move together.
Earlier years stay available through the year selector, so a late self assessment runs on the numbers that applied at the time rather than today's.
Some cases still need an accountant. K codes carrying negative allowances, bespoke sacrifice arrangements, the annual allowance taper for very high earners, and anything involving two employments at once.
Take Home Pay Calculator answers one question. The salary calculator turns gross into net, the income tax calculator splits the bill by band, the National Insurance calculator shows the step at the upper limit, and the pension calculator prices a percentage change three ways at once.
Every tool reads the same rate table, so two pages never disagree. Run this one, note the figure, then open the next and watch which line moves.
Cash is the floor of a decision, not the decision. An hour a day handed back by a shorter commute is roughly two hundred and fifty hours a year, and nothing prices that against a manager worth working for.
Some benefits convert cleanly. Health cover has a taxable value, a learning budget has a receipt, extra leave has a daily rate. Share options that vest over four years and enhanced parental leave do not, so weigh those separately rather than treating them as salary.
Example gallery
Real inputs, real outputs
Graduate starter
First job, default workplace pension.
Gross / yr
£28,000
Pension
5%
Income tax
£3,086
NI
£1,234
Mid career
Standard tax code, modest pension uplift.
Gross / yr
£45,000
Pension
6%
Income tax
£6,486
NI
£2,594
Higher rate
Crossing the higher rate band.
Gross / yr
£72,000
Pension
8%
Income tax
£16,232
NI
£3,451
Scotland mid
Scottish bands applied.
Gross / yr
£45,000
Pension
5%
Income tax
£6,928
NI
£2,594
About this calculator
The Take Home Pay Calculator shows the cash that lands in your bank each month or week from a UK salary, after every deduction. Use the toggle to switch between pay periods.
Quick reference