How do I calculate the salary I need for a specific take-home pay?

Enter your desired monthly or annual take-home pay into our Required Salary Calculator. It reverse-calculates the gross salary needed, accounting for income tax, National Insurance, pension contributions, and student loan repayments based on 2026/27 HMRC rates.

Does pension affect my required salary?

Yes. Pension contributions are deducted from your gross salary before tax, so a higher pension percentage means you need a higher gross salary to achieve the same take-home pay.

What tax code should I use?

Use 1257L if you're entitled to the standard personal allowance. If you have a different code (e.g., BR, D0, K), enter it for a more accurate calculation.

Required salary calculator

Required Salary Calculator 2026/27

Work backwards from your desired take-home pay to find the gross salary you need.

Your target

Desired annual take-home (£)

Or desired monthly take-home (£)

If entered, this overrides the annual figure above.

Pension contribution5%

Student loan

Region

Advanced options

Tax code

Leading digits × 10 set your personal allowance.

Blind Person's Allowance (+£3,070)Marriage Allowance (+£1,260)

Your result

You need a gross salary of

£38,715

To take home ££30,000, you need to earn ££38,715 before tax

Monthly gross

£3,226

Weekly gross

£745

Income Tax

£4,842

National Insurance

£1,937

Pension

£1,936

Where your money goes

Take-home · £30,001 · 77%Income Tax · £4,842 · 13%NI · £1,937 · 5%Pension · £1,936 · 5%

Band	Yearly	Monthly	Weekly	% of Gross
Income Tax	£4,842	£403	£93	12.51%
National Insurance	£1,937	£161	£37	5%
Student Loan	£0	£0	£0	0%
Pension	£1,936	£161	£37	5%
Take-home pay	£30,001	£2,500	£577	77.49%

View Summary

How Required Salary Works

Because UK income tax is progressive — different rates apply to different portions of your salary — there is no simple formula to convert a desired take-home figure into a gross salary. Instead, this calculator uses a binary search: it starts with a range of possible salaries, tests the middle value, and narrows down until it finds the gross salary that produces your exact take-home amount.

The search runs up to 50 iterations, each cutting the possible range in half. After 50 iterations the result is precise to within £1. The same 2026/27 income tax, National Insurance, pension and student loan rules used by our main salary calculator are applied at each step.

Frequently asked questions

Why can't I just multiply take-home by 1.2 or something?

UK income tax is progressive — you pay 20% on the first chunk, 40% on the next, and 45% above £125,140. National Insurance has its own bands. A simple multiplier gets increasingly wrong as salary rises, because marginal rates change. The binary search handles this correctly at every income level.

What if I want to include a bonus in my take-home target?

Enter the annual take-home you want after all deductions, including any bonus. The calculator finds the gross salary that produces that figure. If you also have a bonus paid through payroll, use the main salary calculator with the bonus field to check the combined result.

Does this work for Scottish tax rates?

Yes. Switch the region toggle to Scotland and the calculator applies the Scottish starter, basic, intermediate, higher, advanced and top rates instead of the rest-of-UK 20/40/45% bands.