UK Hourly Wage Calculator

How to convert an hourly rate to a salary (and back)

The standard UK conversion is hourly rate × hours per week × 52 for the annual figure, then ÷12 for monthly and ÷1 for weekly. This flat 52-week convention — not 52.14 or 365÷7 — is what gov.uk's own pay guidance, ACAS's holiday-pay reference period, and every UK salary calculator we checked (thesalarycalculator.co.uk, thecalculatorsite.com, the TUC pay calculator) actually use, so it's the convention to match if you're comparing figures across sites.

For example, £15.00/hour at a £40-hour week is £600.00/week × 52 = £31,200.00/year (£2,600.00/month). Going the other way, a £30,000 salary at 37.5 hours/week works out to £30,000 ÷ 52 ÷ 37.5 = £15.38/hour — but the same £30,000 salary at a £40-hour week is only £14.42/hour, because the pay is spread over more hours.

37.5 hours or 40 hours a week? The assumption changes your answer by ~7%

Most generic (often US-built) calculators default to a 40-hour week. But 37.5 hours — 7.5 hours a day, 5 days, with an unpaid 30-minute lunch break — is the more realistic UK full-time contracted hours figure, and it's the default used by UK-specific tools such as Ciphr's hourly wage calculator. ONS data on actual average hours worked by full-time UK employees puts the figure even lower, around 36.5 hours/week (this includes the effect of unpaid overtime and absence, so it's for context, not as a calculator default).

The gap matters: the same hourly rate produces roughly 6.7% more annual pay at £40h/week than at 37.5h/week (£24,784.50 vs £26,436.80 at the National Living Wage). Always check which hours figure a job offer or a competing calculator is using before comparing numbers — this tool always shows the hours assumption next to the result.

National Minimum Wage and National Living Wage rates (effective 2026-04-01)

The UK's legally-mandated minimum hourly rates depend on age (and apprentice status), and change every 1 April. As of 2026-04-01: £12.71/hour for age 21 and over (called the National Living Wage), £10.85/hour for ages 18-20, and £8.00/hour for under-18s and apprentices — up 4.1% year-on-year for the National Living Wage (from £12.21 in 2025-04-01 to 2026-03-31). Apprentices are entitled to the apprentice rate only if they're under 19, or 19+ and in the first year of their apprenticeship — after that they move to the standard age-band rate. HMRC enforces these rates; you can check your own pay against them using gov.uk's official "Am I getting the National Minimum Wage?" tool.

The Real Living Wage: a voluntary rate, not a legal minimum

The Real Living Wage — currently £13.45/hour across the UK and £14.80/hour in London (2025-26 rates (in effect until the next annual announcement, typically autumn)) — is calculated and published by the Living Wage Foundation, an independent campaigning and accreditation charity. It is not enforced by HMRC and it is not a legal minimum wage — it only applies to employers who have voluntarily chosen to become an accredited "Living Wage Employer". Don't confuse it with the government's National Living Wage, which is a different, legally-mandated rate for workers aged 21+.

Against the April 2026 National Living Wage of £12.71/hour, the Real Living Wage is worth about £1,443/year more (UK rate) and £4,075/year more (London rate) for a full-time worker on 37.5 hours a week. As of April 2025, an estimated 14.6% of UK jobs (4.4 million) paid below the Real Living Wage.

"True" hourly rate: what your pay is really worth once you net out annual leave

A salaried employee is paid the same amount whether or not they take their holiday — the 52-week annualisation above assumes you're paid across all 52 weeks, holidays included. But if you want to know what each hour of actual work is really worth — useful for comparing a salaried role to freelance or contractor pay — you need to divide that same annual pay by the weeks you actually work, not the weeks you're paid for.

Example: at £15.00/hour, 37.5h/week, with the statutory minimum 5.6 weeks of paid annual leave, your stated annual pay is still £29,250.00 — but spread over the 46.4 weeks you actually work, that same pay is worth £16.81/hour, about 12.1% more than the £15.00 headline rate. Most generic converters skip this step entirely and just do a naive ÷52 — this tool shows both figures.

What's my take-home pay?

The figures above are all gross pay, before Income Tax, National Insurance, student loan repayments or pension contributions. For example, £15.00/hour at 40h/week (£31,200.00/year gross) works out to about £25,983.60/year take-home (£2,165.30/month) for an rUK PAYE employee in 2026/27, after £3,726.00 income tax and £1,490.40 National Insurance. The National Living Wage at 37.5h/week (£24,784.50/year gross) takes home about £21,364.44/year (£1,780.37/month).

Tick "Also show take-home pay" above for your own numbers, or use the full UK Take-Home Pay Calculator for the complete breakdown — Scottish vs rUK tax bands, student loan plans, and salary sacrifice vs relief-at-source pension modelling.