Pay & Tax

Paycheck Calculator

Gross to net take-home, with every deduction shown.

What it does. Take-home pay is gross pay minus income tax, social contributions and any pension or student loan deduction. This shows each line rather than one number, because the useful question is usually which deduction is large — and the answer differs enormously by country, tax code and pension arrangement.

Runs in your browserNothing uploadsNo signupWorks offline

How to use Paycheck Calculator

Enter gross pay and the pay period.
Set the tax and pension assumptions to match your payslip.
Compare the breakdown against your actual payslip line by line.

Why the number never quite matches your payslip

A general calculator cannot know your tax code, your student loan plan, whether your pension is salary-sacrifice or net-pay, or whether you have a company car.

Any of those moves the result by a meaningful amount, and salary sacrifice moves it in a way people find surprising: it reduces gross pay, so it cuts tax and national insurance as well as taking the contribution.

Treat this as a model you can inspect rather than a payslip. If a line here differs from your real one, the difference is the interesting part — that is where an assumption is wrong.

The deductions, in the order they usually apply

Salary sacrifice — pension or benefits taken before anything else, reducing taxable and NI-able pay.
Income tax — banded, applied to what remains after any personal allowance.
Social contributions — national insurance, FICA or equivalent.
Student loan — a percentage above a threshold, plan-dependent.
Net-pay pension — taken after tax where the scheme works that way.

Order matters. The same pension contribution costs you materially less through salary sacrifice than through a net-pay arrangement, because it is removed before tax and NI are calculated.

Marginal rate is not your tax rate

The single most common confusion in payroll: a raise into a higher band does not tax all your income at that rate. Only the pounds above the threshold are taxed at the higher rate.

A raise never reduces take-home pay through banding alone.

There are genuine exceptions and they are worth knowing. In the UK, the personal allowance tapers away between £100,000 and £125,140, producing an effective 60% band. Benefit and childcare cliff-edges can create similar effects at much lower incomes. Those are thresholds, not the ordinary band structure.

Frequently asked questions

Why does this not match my payslip exactly?

Because it cannot know your tax code, student loan plan, pension scheme type or benefits in kind. Each moves the result. Compare line by line — the line that differs is where an assumption is wrong.

Will a raise push me into a higher bracket and cost me money?

No. Only income above the threshold is taxed at the higher rate, so a raise always increases take-home through banding alone. Genuine cliff-edges exist around allowance tapering and benefit thresholds, but they are not the ordinary band structure.

What is salary sacrifice?

Your gross pay is reduced and the employer pays the amount into your pension. Because it comes off before tax and national insurance, the same contribution costs you less than a deduction taken after tax.

Is my salary data sent anywhere?

No. Everything is calculated in your browser. Salary is exactly the sort of figure that should not be posted to a free web service.

Which country do the defaults use?

Set the tax bands to match where you are paid — the defaults are a starting point, not a jurisdiction. The breakdown is the useful part and it works the same way anywhere.