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How the Calculations Work

A transparent estimate with one consistent annual ledger.

One employment for the full year, 12 regular monthly pay periods, Category A employee National Insurance and employment income only. Choose no pension, the auto-enrolment preset on qualifying earnings, or custom percentages on full reference salary. Pension tax treatment can be net pay or salary sacrifice. Figures exclude bonuses, irregular pay, other income, benefits, custom tax codes, relief-at-source pensions, childcare, pension tax charges and loan payoff timing. Auto-enrolment eligibility is not assessed.

1. Start with Regular Pay

Annual salary is divided into 12 monthly pay amounts in pence. Any remainder pennies are distributed across the first months so the total still equals the stated salary. Pension contributions are calculated and rounded to pennies each month.

2. Choose the Pension Contribution

Each salary starts with no pension included. This is a calculation starting point, not a recommendation to opt out of a workplace pension. Choose the contribution option that matches your scheme.

The preset does not check age, eligibility, enrolment duties or your employer’s scheme rules. It is not a finding that you must be enrolled, and it does not switch contributions off below the enrolment earnings trigger. Other schemes can use different rates or pensionable pay.

3. Apply the Pension Tax Treatment

Net pay is the starting selection. A net-pay contribution reduces taxable income but not the National Insurance or student-loan base. Salary sacrifice reduces cash gross, taxable income and the earnings used for National Insurance and loans. Auto-enrolment describes the contribution preset, not its tax treatment: select the treatment your employer actually uses.

Employer contributions use the same contribution base as the employee amount and are additions to the pension, not a further deduction from take-home. Employer National Insurance savings are not included. Relief-at-source schemes, in which a provider adds basic-rate tax relief, are not supported; do not use the net-pay setting to represent one.

4. Estimate Annual Income Tax

The standard allowance is reduced where adjusted net income exceeds £100,000, using a whole-pound allowance reduction. Progressive rates are applied to income after the allowance, with band charges truncated to pennies. Scotland uses its own bands. This does not reproduce PAYE tax-code tables or every Self Assessment rule.

5. Calculate Monthly Deductions

Category A National Insurance uses the published monthly thresholds of £1,048 and £4,189, with 8% and 2% rates. The combined charge is rounded to pennies per month. Student loans use the selected plan’s monthly threshold and floor each repayment to whole pounds; postgraduate deductions are calculated separately.

6. Reconcile Cash and Pension

Annual take-home is gross salary less employee-funded pension, estimated Income Tax, National Insurance and loans. Cash plus pension adds the total employee-funded and employer pension contributions back as a comparison measure. It does not mean pension savings can be spent now or that tax charges have been assessed.

Monthly numbers are annual totals divided by 12 and rounded. Adding rounded monthly rows can produce penny differences. Changing only the displayed period never changes the annual calculation.

Why Another Estimate Can Differ

First compare the tax year, region, pension contribution base, pension tax treatment and loan selection. A percentage of full salary is not the same contribution as that percentage of qualifying earnings. Calculators that use annual NI or pension thresholds and divide by 12 can also differ by a few pennies from our monthly-pay calculation. Rounding each monthly tax band independently can produce another penny difference. A real payslip can differ further because of its tax code and payroll history.

The Benchmark in Brief

In the ONS ASHE 2025 provisional full-time employee-job figures, the UK median annual gross earnings are £39,039. The top-10%, top-5% and top-1% thresholds are £76,903, £99,387 and £186,840 respectively. These are historical gross-earnings estimates for the tax year ending 5 April 2025, not take-home pay or a ranking of every UK resident.

Read the UK salary percentile guide, check London's different thresholds and quality limits, or compare all 12 workplace regions. The high-earner figures come from ONS release 3105; the full sources and sampling limitations are set out below and in the methodology.

UK and Regional Earnings Benchmarks

The dashboard uses ONS ASHE 2025 provisional. The main tables were released on 23 October 2025; the additional 90th–99th percentile release, reference 3105, was published on 4 November 2025. Annual gross earnings cover the tax year ending 5 April 2025. This is separate from the calculator's 2026/27 tax rules. The sources were checked on 17 October 2026; figures are not adjusted for inflation or presented as live 2026 earnings.

The main national thresholds come from Table 1.7a, Annual pay: Gross, Full-Time worksheet, All Employees row. Regional thresholds come from the same measure in Table 7.7a, Full-Time worksheet, by place of work. The matching .7b workbooks supply coefficients of variation. The national row was cross-checked against Table 7's UK row. Additional upper-tail thresholds come from the 2025 full-time, all-sexes, all-sector figures in ONS ad-hoc release 3105, with the same annual-pay population and regional basis.

Who the Benchmark Covers

Full-time employee jobs, all sexes, on adult rates, held for more than a year. Full-time means more than 30 paid hours per week, or at least 25 for teaching professions. The comparison excludes self-employment and is not a ranking of unique people, households or everyone living in the UK. A part-time salary is not directly comparable.

Regional figures describe workplace location, not home address. The map has nine English regions plus Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Observed annual gross earnings can include overtime and bonuses, so a current base-salary offer is an approximate comparison. The benchmark uses entered gross salary, before the calculator's pension deductions, not take-home pay or total pension value.

What a Percentile Band Means

The available schema has 20 thresholds: the 10th, 20th, 25th, 30th, 40th, 50th, 60th, 70th, 75th and 80th percentiles, then each percentile from the 90th through the 99th. A threshold is used only when its published value and quality information meet the checks below. The 50th percentile is the median.

A salary between two usable thresholds receives their band, for example 60th–70th or 97th–98th percentile. Equality starts the band at that threshold. At or above the highest usable threshold, an open-ended label is shown. A valid 99th-percentile threshold supports “Top 1%”; where the highest usable threshold is the 97th, “Top 3%” is the most specific supported label. These are survey benchmark bands, not exact personal ranks.

For example, the published UK 99th-percentile threshold is £186,840, with a CV of 9.1%. An entered £250,000 salary therefore falls in the UK Top 1% benchmark band. This does not establish a position such as the top 0.5%, and does not rank wealth, household income or all UK residents.

London illustrates the quality limit. Its highest usable threshold here is the 97th percentile at £207,988, with a CV of 16.5%. Its published 98th-percentile CV is 32.8%, above our limit; its 99th-percentile quality information is unavailable. An entered £250,000 salary therefore receives Top 3% in London, with finer detail unavailable. It is not evidence that the salary falls outside London's top 1%.

The chart joins adjacent usable published points with straight lines for orientation and leaves gaps where observations are excluded. Any position between thresholds is a visual aid, not another ONS estimate. Below the first and above the last usable threshold, no exact tail position is inferred. Bands are not statistical confidence intervals. Chart scale changes affect the view, not the underlying rank. Map shading represents the band for the selected salary, not living standards or purchasing power.

Sampling Uncertainty and Quality Rules

We retain a published threshold only when its coefficient of variation (CV) is available and no more than 20%. ONS describes CVs of 5% or less as precise, over 5% to 10% as reasonably precise, and over 10% to 20% as acceptable. Larger CVs are unreliable for practical use. Passing this rule does not remove sampling uncertainty.

Ad-hoc release 3105 includes some values that ONS would ordinarily suppress on quality grounds. Publication alone therefore does not make every value usable. Values with a CV above 20%, without usable quality information, or otherwise unavailable or suppressed are excluded from ranking and shown as unavailable. They are not replaced with zero, interpolated into new observations or assigned invented values. A missing threshold can widen the displayed band; an unavailable median is not estimated.

Regional upper tails are often less precise than the national figures. Quality notes identify the relevant limitations. The UK top-1% threshold's 9.1% CV and London's last usable threshold's 16.5% CV remain survey uncertainty, not an exact confidence interval or a guarantee of an individual's rank.

Map Geography and Attribution

The map uses ONS December 2023 ultra-generalised (500 m), coastline-clipped boundaries in British National Grid, scaled and rounded for a small screen graphic. Islands retain their geographic positions. The boundary date is independent of the earnings reference year. This is an overview map, not a postcode lookup or a navigation boundary service.

Source: Office for National Statistics licensed under the Open Government Licence v.3.0. Contains OS data © Crown copyright and database right 2023.

Earnings and Geography Sources

Earnings data contain public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. The dashboard is independent of ONS and is not endorsed by it.

Publication and Checks

Published by PayFigured, operated by ELENOVO HOLDINGS LTD. Earnings sources and this explanation were checked on 17 October 2026. The dashboard and earnings guides use the same versioned ONS dataset; automated tests check calculation examples, published thresholds and generated tables. The review date records a substantive check, not an automatic daily refresh.

These checks are not independent professional certification or a claim of expert review. A release can pass automated tests and still contain a mistake. Report a correction with a fictional example. We do not need your payslip or personal financial documents.

What Has Been Checked

Automated tests cover worked examples, band and allowance boundaries, NI/loan rounding, input validation and ledger reconciliation. Passing tests is not professional certification. Report a discrepancy with a fictional example.

Check the Sources

Figures checked for 2026/27. This is an independent estimate, not an HMRC service.

PayFigured is operated by ELENOVO HOLDINGS LTD, registered in England and Wales. Company number: 16703117. Registered office: 3rd Floor, 86-90 Paul Street, London, EC2A 4NE, United Kingdom. Contact: hello@payfigured.co.uk.