UK Required Salary Calculator 2026/27
Required Salary Calculator
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Calculate the gross salary needed for your desired take-home pay
The Required Salary Calculator works in reverse: instead of calculating take-home pay from a gross salary, you enter your desired monthly or annual net income and the calculator finds the gross salary you need to earn. This is useful when budgeting for a mortgage, calculating the minimum offer to accept from a new employer, or understanding how a pension contribution changes the salary you need to negotiate.
The calculation accounts for all standard deductions: income tax (20%–45%), National Insurance (8% or 2%), any pension contribution percentage you specify, and your student loan repayment plan. The result is the exact gross salary that, after all those deductions, leaves you with your target take-home — accurate to within a few pence.
Example: to take home £2,500 per month (£30,000 per year) with no pension and no student loan in 2026/27, you need a gross salary of approximately £37,500. Adding a 5% pension contribution means you need around £38,215 gross to still clear £30,000 net after pension. Use the advanced settings to tailor the calculation to your exact situation.
Enter your desired take-home amount (annual or monthly) and the calculator works backwards through all tax and National Insurance deductions to find the exact gross salary required.
Income tax (20%–45%), National Insurance (8% or 2%), pension contributions, and student loan repayments all reduce your gross pay before you receive it. On a £30,000 salary, deductions amount to roughly £4,880, so achieving £25,000 take-home requires a gross salary around £30,000.
Yes. If you contribute to a pension, a higher gross salary is needed to achieve the same take-home, because pension contributions are deducted in addition to tax. However, the tax relief on pension contributions means the gross salary required increases by less than the pension amount itself.
Yes. Enter your total monthly outgoings as your desired monthly take-home, and the calculator will show the minimum gross annual salary you need to negotiate for.
The result is accurate to within a few pence. The calculator uses a binary search algorithm that iterates until the calculated take-home matches your target within a £0.01 tolerance.