Salary to Hourly Calculator

Quick answer

To convert salary to an hourly rate: divide by 52 weeks, then by your weekly hours. On a standard 37.5-hour week that is salary ÷ 1,950. A £35,000 salary is 35,000 ÷ 1,950 = £17.95 an hour before tax.

Convert your salary to an hourly rate above

Pop your annual salary and weekly hours into the tool at the top of this page and it returns your gross hourly rate instantly. The rest of this guide shows the formula behind it, walks through real UK examples, and explains why the weeks-per-year figure you choose can change the answer by more than you would expect.

How the salary to hourly calculation works

The maths is simple once you know what goes into it. The plain-English formula is:

Hourly rate = Annual salary ÷ (Hours worked per week × Weeks worked per year)

The denominator is the total number of hours you work in a year. Most full-time UK contracts are written as 35, 37.5 or 40 hours a week. Multiply that by the number of weeks you are paid for and you get your annual hours; divide your salary by that and you have your rate.

The figure people argue over is weeks per year. There are 52 weeks in a calendar year, and a salaried employee is normally paid for all of them, including holiday and bank holidays, because paid leave is part of the package. So for a like-for-like comparison against your salary, 52 weeks is usually the right number. If instead you want to know what each hour you are physically at work earns you, subtract your paid holiday first. A typical full-time worker in the UK is entitled to 5.6 weeks of statutory paid leave, which leaves roughly 46.4 working weeks.

Both answers are valid, they just measure different things. Dividing by 52 tells you your contractual rate. Dividing by your actual weeks at the desk tells you the effective value of each hour you spend working. The calculator above uses your inputs so you can try either approach.

One more thing to keep straight: this is a gross hourly rate. It is the rate before Income Tax, National Insurance, pension contributions and any student loan come out. Two people on the same £30,000 can take home noticeably different amounts depending on their tax code, pension and where in the UK they live, because Scotland sets its own income tax bands. If you want the after-deductions picture, jump across to our take-home pay calculator once you have your gross rate.

Worked examples with the maths shown

Example 1: a nurse on £30,000 working 37.5 hours

Imagine you are an NHS nurse earning £30,000 a year on a standard 37.5-hour contract. Using the full 52 weeks you are paid for:

• Annual hours = 37.5 × 52 = 1,950 hours
• Hourly rate = £30,000 ÷ 1,950 = £15.38 per hour

If you instead want to know what each hour actually on shift is worth, strip out 5.6 weeks of leave: 37.5 × 46.4 = 1,740 hours, giving £30,000 ÷ 1,740 = £17.24 per hour. Same salary, two honest answers, depending on the question you are asking.

Example 2: a manager on £45,000 working 40 hours

Now take a team leader on £45,000 with a 40-hour week:

• Annual hours = 40 × 52 = 2,080 hours
• Hourly rate = £45,000 ÷ 2,080 = £21.63 per hour

That £45,000 sits entirely within the basic-rate band for 2026/27 (the higher-rate threshold is £50,270), so once you factor in tax the take-home rate is lower but predictable. After the £12,570 Personal Allowance, the taxable £32,430 is taxed at 20%, giving £6,486 of Income Tax before NI. Knowing the gross hourly rate first makes it easy to see how much of each hour the taxman takes.

Example 3: a part-time role on £18,000 working 22 hours

Part-time pay is where this conversion earns its keep, because comparing two part-time offers by salary alone is misleading. Say a job pays £18,000 for 22 hours a week:

• Annual hours = 22 × 52 = 1,144 hours
• Hourly rate = £18,000 ÷ 1,144 = £15.73 per hour

On an hourly basis that part-time role pays more per hour than the £30,000 full-time nurse example, even though the headline salary is much lower. That is exactly the kind of insight a salary to hourly calculator is built to surface.

Picking the right hours and weeks figures

Your answer is only as good as the two numbers you feed in, so it pays to get them right.

• Contracted hours, not hours present. Use the hours in your contract. If you regularly do unpaid overtime, your real hourly rate is lower than the contract implies, so it can be worth running the figure on your actual hours too.
• Decide what "weeks" means. Use 52 to match what you are paid for, or your actual working weeks (around 46.4 for a full-timer on statutory leave) to value time at work. Be consistent when comparing two jobs.
• Lunch breaks. Unpaid breaks are not working time. A "9 to 5" with an hour for lunch is 35 paid hours, not 40.
• Shift patterns. If your hours vary week to week, take your average across a full rota cycle rather than a single busy week.

If you want to flip the calculation the other way and turn an hourly figure back into an annual salary, our hourly rate calculator does the reverse, and the pro rata salary calculator is handy when a role is advertised at a full-time-equivalent figure but you will work fewer days.

From gross hourly rate to what lands in your account

Your gross hourly rate is the starting point, not the take-home. As an employee, a slice of pay above £12,570 goes to Income Tax and a slice above the same Primary Threshold goes to Class 1 National Insurance at 8% up to £50,270, then 2% above that. A workplace pension contribution comes off too, and that one actually works in your favour for the long term.

Because tax is banded, your net hourly rate is not a flat percentage of gross, and it falls more steeply once any of your pay crosses £50,270 into the higher-rate band. Scottish taxpayers have different bands again, so two people on identical salaries either side of the border keep different amounts. For the full deductions breakdown, the gross to net calculator and the salary calculator show tax, NI and pension line by line. You can check the current National Minimum and National Living Wage rates on gov.uk, and MoneyHelper has free, impartial guidance on understanding your payslip.

Common mistakes when converting salary to an hourly rate

• Confusing 52 weeks with working weeks. Dividing by 46.4 instead of 52, or vice versa, changes the rate by roughly 12%. Neither is wrong, but mixing the two when comparing offers is.
• Counting unpaid breaks as paid hours. This inflates your hours and understates your true rate.
• Comparing gross against net. Make sure both figures are gross, or both net. Lining up a gross salary rate against an after-tax hourly figure flatters whichever one is gross.
• Ignoring overtime and on-call. If a chunk of your real working time is unpaid or paid at a different rate, the headline number hides it. Our overtime calculator helps you price extra hours properly.
• Forgetting the value of paid leave and benefits. A salaried role bundles in paid holiday, sick pay and a pension. A pure hourly comparison against a contract or freelance rate can flatter the freelancer, who has to fund all of that themselves.

These estimates are for guidance only and are not personal tax or financial advice. For a decision that affects your income, check your own contract and tax code or speak to a qualified adviser.

Related pay and take-home calculators

Once you know your hourly rate, these tools help you see the rest of the picture: the take-home pay calculator for your net monthly figure, the hourly rate calculator to convert back to an annual salary, and the holiday entitlement calculator to work out exactly how many paid weeks you are owed before you divide.

Salary to hourly at 37.5 hours a week

Compare a job offer properly: convert both to hourly, then run take-home through the salary calculator. Paid by the hour instead? Flip it with the hourly rate calculator. Legal minimums: GOV.UK.

Who should use this calculator

Converts an annual salary into an hourly figure — the calculation you need when comparing a salaried job against hourly or agency work, or when deciding whether unpaid extra hours are quietly cutting your real rate.

That last use is the interesting one. A £40,000 salary sounds fixed, but if you routinely work 50 hours instead of 37.5, your effective hourly rate falls by a quarter. Running your actual hours rather than your contracted ones is often uncomfortable and always informative. For converting the other way, use the hourly rate calculator.

What this calculator assumes

• The hourly figure is annual salary ÷ (hours per week × weeks per year).
• The weeks figure includes paid holiday, since salaried staff are paid through leave.
• Figures are gross, before deductions.
• The hours you enter are whatever you choose — contracted or actual.

Limitations — what it does not cover

• Unpaid overtime, unless you enter your real hours rather than contracted ones.
• The value of benefits — pension, sick pay, paid leave and notice — which an hourly comparison ignores entirely.
• Tax differences, since the deduction rate is not proportional across income levels.
• National Minimum Wage compliance, assessed on actual hours in each pay reference period.
• Term-time-only and annualised-hours contracts, where pay and work are spread differently.