Pay Rise Calculator: See What You Actually Keep

Work out your pay rise above

Enter your current salary and either the percentage rise or the new figure you have been offered. The tool returns your new gross salary, your new take-home pay, and the extra you keep each month and year. Read on for the maths behind it, two worked examples, and the traps that quietly shrink a rise.

What a pay rise really means for your take-home

The number your manager quotes is almost always the gross rise: the increase to your salary before anything comes out. By the time it reaches you, two deductions have already been applied. Income Tax takes 20% of most of it for a basic-rate earner, and Class 1 National Insurance takes 8% on earnings between the thresholds. So on a typical rise you keep roughly 72p of every extra pound, not the full pound.

That gap is normal and nothing has gone wrong. But it explains why a rise that looked generous can feel underwhelming when the first new payslip arrives. The point of a pay rise calculator is to remove that surprise before you accept an offer or budget around it.

Percentage rise versus a fixed increase

There are two ways a rise is usually expressed, and they are easy to confuse.

• A percentage rise multiplies your current salary. A 5% rise on £30,000 is £1,500; the same 5% on £45,000 is £2,250. The bigger your salary, the bigger the cash value of the same percentage.
• A fixed increase is a flat amount, say £2,000, regardless of your starting point. As a percentage it is worth more to a lower earner than a higher one.

If you want to compare an offer against inflation or against a colleague, convert it to a percentage. Our percentage calculator handles that in one step. To turn a percentage into your new salary, the formula is simply: new salary = current salary x (1 + rise percentage / 100).

How this pay rise calculator works

The pay rise calculator runs your before and after salaries through the same Income Tax and National Insurance rules HMRC uses, then subtracts one result from the other. In plain words:

• New gross salary = current salary + rise (or current salary x (1 + percentage / 100)).
• Take-home pay = gross salary - Income Tax - National Insurance.
• Extra you keep = new take-home pay - old take-home pay.

For 2026/27, Income Tax in England, Wales and Northern Ireland uses a £12,570 Personal Allowance, then 20% up to £37,700 of taxable income, 40% above that to £125,140, and 45% beyond. National Insurance for employees is 8% on earnings between £12,570 and £50,270, then 2% above £50,270. The calculator applies these bands to both salaries and reports the difference.

One simplification to be aware of: National Insurance is actually worked out per pay period, not as a single annual sum. An annual figure is a close approximation that matches your yearly total, but if your pay is irregular across the year the monthly split can vary slightly. Pension contributions, student loan deductions and salary sacrifice are not included unless your fuller breakdown adds them, so treat the result as your pay rise on a standard tax code with no extra deductions.

Worked example: a 5% rise on a nurse's salary

Priya is an NHS nurse earning £32,000 and has been offered a 5% pay rise. Here is what that looks like end to end.

• New gross salary: £32,000 x 1.05 = £33,600. The gross rise is £1,600.
• Extra Income Tax: 20% of £1,600 = £320.
• Extra National Insurance: 8% of £1,600 = £128.
• Total extra deductions: £320 + £128 = £448.
• Extra take-home: £1,600 - £448 = £1,152 a year, or about £96 a month.

So Priya's 5% headline rise becomes roughly a 3.6% increase in what she actually banks. She keeps 72% of the rise, which is exactly what you would expect for someone sitting comfortably inside the basic-rate band. Nothing is reclaimable here; this is simply tax and NI working as designed.

Worked example: a rise that crosses a tax band

Now take Daniel, a project manager on £49,000 who negotiates a rise to £52,000, an increase of just over 6%. The gross rise is £3,000, but part of it pushes him over the £50,270 higher-rate threshold, so the two halves are taxed differently.

• The slice from £49,000 to £50,270 (£1,270) is taxed at 20% and 8% NI, so he keeps 72% of it: £914.40.
• The slice from £50,270 to £52,000 (£1,730) is taxed at 40% and 2% NI, so he keeps 58% of it: £1,003.40.
• Total extra take-home: £914.40 + £1,003.40 = £1,917.80 a year, about £160 a month.

Daniel keeps only about 64p of every extra pound across the whole rise, because the top portion is taxed at the higher rate. This is the band-crossing effect, and it is the single biggest reason a rise can disappoint. The rise is still worth taking, but it is worth knowing the upper slice is taxed harder before you assume the full £3,000 changes your monthly budget.

How much of a pay rise do you actually keep?

As a rough guide for 2026/27, here is what each extra pound is worth after tax and NI, depending on where the rise sits:

The figures above follow the 2026/27 rates and thresholds. You can confirm the current bands at the official gov.uk Income Tax rates page. The brutal middle row is the £100,000 trap: between £100,000 and £125,140 your Personal Allowance is withdrawn by £1 for every £2 you earn, so a rise in that range is effectively taxed at around 60% before NI. A rise from, say, £99,000 to £105,000 is one of the few where you should run the numbers carefully before celebrating.

Scotland is taxed differently

If you live in Scotland, your Income Tax bands are set by the Scottish Government and differ from the rest of the UK. Scotland has more bands and a higher rate kicks in at a lower point, so the proportion of a rise you keep is not the same north of the border. National Insurance is identical UK-wide, and your Personal Allowance is still £12,570, but the Income Tax slice of your rise will follow Scottish rates. If you are a Scottish taxpayer, use a Scotland tax calculator for the precise net figure, then apply the same before-and-after logic to find your real increase.

Things to watch after a pay rise

• Your tax code can lag. HMRC updates codes through the year, and a rise sometimes triggers a temporary or emergency code that takes too much. Check your payslip code against your circumstances; if it looks wrong, contact HMRC rather than waiting for it to correct itself.
• The £50,270 and £100,000 lines bite hard. Crossing into the higher rate or the allowance taper changes the value of every pound above the line, as Daniel's example shows.
• Child Benefit and student loans react too. A rise can pull you into the High Income Child Benefit Charge or push more of your salary above a student loan threshold, both of which trim the net gain. Neither is included here unless you add them separately.
• Salary sacrifice can soften the blow. Putting part of a rise into a pension via salary sacrifice reduces both Income Tax and NI on that slice, which is especially useful near a band edge. See our take-home pay calculator to model that.

Common mistakes when judging a pay rise

• Treating the gross rise as cash in hand. The most common error. Always net it down before you commit to new spending.
• Confusing a percentage with the cash value. The same percentage is worth very different amounts at different salaries.
• Forgetting the band you are crossing. A rise that starts in the basic rate and ends in the higher rate is not taxed at one flat rate.
• Ignoring the rest of the package. A smaller rise with better pension matching or extra holiday can beat a bigger headline number.
• Comparing to inflation incorrectly. A 4% rise when prices rose 5% is a real-terms cut, even though the cash figure went up.

For the full picture of your new salary, run the after figure through our salary calculator or check the tax portion alone with the income tax calculator.

These results are estimates for guidance only and are not personal tax or financial advice. Figures use 2026/27 rates for England, Wales and Northern Ireland; confirm your own position with HMRC or a qualified adviser.

Who should use this calculator

Shows what a pay rise leaves you with after deductions, and — more usefully — whether it is a real rise at all. Entering an inflation figure alongside converts a nominal increase into a real one, which is the number that determines whether you are actually better off.

A 3% rise against 4% inflation is a pay cut in everything but name, and framing it that way is often the most useful thing to take into a negotiation. Where the pay rise tax trap calculator focuses on the bands where the rate spikes, this is the everyday view.

What this calculator assumes

• The rise is added to your current salary and taxed at the resulting marginal rate.
• Income Tax, National Insurance and pension contributions are applied to the increase.
• The inflation figure, where entered, restates the rise in real terms.
• Selecting Scotland applies Scottish bands.

Limitations — what it does not cover

• Pension contributions rising with salary, which reduce take-home further but are not a loss.
• Benefit tapers, where Universal Credit withdraws 55p of each extra net pound.
• Threshold effects at £60,000 for Child Benefit and £100,000 for the Personal Allowance.
• Student loan repayments, which rise with income.
• Your personal inflation rate, which may differ substantially from the headline figure.
• Non-pay elements of a package — bonus, pension, leave — which can matter more than the headline percentage.

Related calculators

To go deeper into the numbers behind your rise, try the salary calculator for a full payslip breakdown, the take-home pay calculator to model pension and student loan deductions, and the percentage calculator to compare offers as percentages.