Disposable income calculator

How does this disposable income calculator work?

It starts from your gross annual salary, takes the deductions in the order UK payroll does, then subtracts your essential outgoings - leaving the money that is genuinely yours to direct each month.

Everything runs in your browser - your salary never reaches our servers - and the same tested engine produces every figure on this page, including the tables and worked examples below. Drag any slider and the breakdown bar redraws to show where each month's pay goes.

What are the 2026/27 income tax and National Insurance rates?

The published 2026/27 rates for England, Wales and Northern Ireland, verified against gov.uk. They live in a per-tax-year data file, so next April is a data update, not a rewrite.

The two thresholds that matter most, £12,570 and £50,270, have been frozen for years while wages rise, so each pay rise lands a little more of your income in a higher band. And National Insurance is charged on every pound above £12,570 whether or not you pay into a pension, unless the contribution goes in through salary sacrifice - which is why moving the pension slider shrinks the income tax segment of the breakdown bar but leaves the NI segment alone.

Take-home pay by salary in 2026/27

With no pension contribution and no student loan, take-home rises from £1,493 a month on £20,000 to £7,607 on £150,000 - but the share HMRC keeps climbs from 10% to 39% along the way.

The effective rate is the average across your whole salary. The marginal rate - the last column - is what you feel when you negotiate a rise, and it moves in steps: a basic-rate taxpayer keeps £720 of every £1,000, a higher-rate taxpayer above £50,270 keeps £580, someone inside the £100,000 to £125,140 taper keeps only £380, and it rises again to £530 once the allowance has gone and the additional rate applies.

How much does a student loan take off your pay?

9% of everything you earn above your plan's threshold (6% for a postgraduate loan), collected through payroll before your pay reaches you. The plan matters more than the balance: on £30,000, Plan 2 takes £5 a month and Plan 5 takes £38.

Repayments are worked out on gross pay, not on taxable pay, so a pension contribution does not reduce them - and they stop the moment your salary drops below the threshold, which makes them behave more like a tax than a debt. Pick your plan in the calculator and the student loan segment appears in the breakdown bar with the exact monthly figure.

What does a pension contribution really cost you?

Less than it puts in. Because the contribution comes out before income tax, each £100 a basic-rate taxpayer sends to their pension costs £80 of take-home; for a higher-rate taxpayer it is £60.

Auto-enrolment requires 8% of qualifying earnings in total, of which the employee typically pays 5% including tax relief, which is why 5% of salary is the calculator's default. Whether to go higher is the question the rest of this page builds towards: the trade is a smaller number today for a larger one at retirement, and our retirement age calculator turns the extra contribution into the age it could let you stop.

Worked examples: three payslips, three answers

Three people run through the same engine as the calculator above. Open any of them in the calculator by setting the same four inputs.

The 60% tax trap between £100,000 and £125,140

Earn between £100,000 and £125,140 and each extra £100 costs you £50 of personal allowance on top of the 40% tax, so HMRC keeps £60 of it - £62 once National Insurance is counted. A pension contribution unwinds it pound for pound.

That £6,000 a year of tax saved makes this one of the most effective pension contributions available, rivalled only by an employer match or the Child Benefit charge band. Set the salary slider above £100,000 and raise the pension percentage: the income tax segment shrinks by £500 for every £833 the pension segment grows, so take-home falls by only £333.

What should you do with your disposable income?

Most people do best in this order: a cash buffer, then the employer match, then any expensive debt, and only then the pension-or-ISA decision, which turns on when you will want the money back.

1. 1Build an emergency fund firstThree to six months of essential outgoings, held in cash. On the £1,500 example that is £4,500 to £9,000: enough that a broken boiler or a gap between jobs never has to come out of investments.
2. 2Take every pound of employer matchIf your employer matches contributions above the auto-enrolment minimum, each £100 you add is met by another £100 before any tax relief - an instant, guaranteed return no investment can match.
3. 3Clear expensive debtCredit cards, overdrafts and buy-now-pay-later balances charge more than any pension or ISA can reliably earn. Paying them off is the highest guaranteed return after the employer match, and it raises next month's disposable income too.
4. 4Then pension for later, ISA for soonerMoney you will not need before your late fifties earns tax relief in a pension; money you might want earlier belongs in an ISA. Our guide to SIPP vs ISA for early retirement works through the trade-off with figures, and if you are under 40 and a basic-rate taxpayer, Lifetime ISA vs SIPP covers the third option.

Saving half of the £947 makes work optional at 67; saving roughly all of it brings that forward to 61. Whatever the amount, the useful test of it is not a savings rate but a date: the button under your result carries your disposable income straight into the retirement age calculator, which turns a monthly figure into the age work becomes optional, and our guide to how much you actually need to retire sizes the pot that saving is aimed at.

What this calculator leaves out

It models a single PAYE salary in England, Wales or Northern Ireland with the standard personal allowance. Anything that changes your tax code or your NI class will move the real figure.

• Scottish income tax. Scotland sets its own bands and rates, so the income tax line is wrong for Scottish taxpayers; the FAQ below says by roughly how much.
• Tax codes and benefits in kind. A company car, private medical insurance or an underpayment from a previous year changes your tax code and your monthly deduction.
• Bonuses, overtime and second jobs. The calculator spreads one annual salary evenly across twelve months. A bonus month is taxed at your marginal rate, and a second job normally has no personal allowance attached.
• Self-employment. Sole traders pay income tax and class 4 National Insurance through self-assessment rather than PAYE, at different rates and in two payments on account rather than monthly.
• Child Benefit and Marriage Allowance. The High Income Child Benefit Charge claws back Child Benefit above its threshold, and Marriage Allowance transfers part of one partner's personal allowance to the other; both change the real take-home of the households they apply to.

Check the result against a payslip once you have matched your pension percentage and student loan plan: the income tax and National Insurance lines should be within a few pounds a month. The gaps that remain almost always trace back to one of the items above.