Weighing up a job offer against your current pay — or two offers against each other? Headline salaries lie. Compare what actually lands in your bank account, side by side, after tax, National Insurance, student loan and pension. Free, instant, and nothing is recorded.
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Uses 2026/27 rates (including Scottish bands), a standard 1257L tax code and the same personal circumstances for both offers. Bonuses are treated as taxed on top of salary. This is an illustration, not financial advice — nothing you enter is stored or sent anywhere. Want one salary in full detail? Use the salary calculator.
A £5,000 pay rise never puts £5,000 in your pocket. Between income tax, National Insurance and student loan deductions, a basic-rate taxpayer keeps about 72p of each extra pound — and between £50,270 and £100,000 that drops to roughly 51p if you’re repaying a Plan 2 loan. That’s why two offers that look £3,000 apart can be surprisingly close once they land in your bank account — and why you should always compare take-home, not headline.
Want the full detail on one number — Scottish bands, marriage allowance, minimum wage checks, hourly breakdowns? Run it through the salary calculator, or jump straight to a ready-made breakdown like £30,000 after tax or £40,000 after tax.
Add the two numbers together: take-home difference plus pension difference (the calculator shows both). Pension money is still your money — it’s just locked until later, and it usually arrives with tax relief and an employer top-up that a salary rise doesn’t get. A £1,000 lower take-home in exchange for £2,500 more going into your pension is mathematically a raise, if you can afford the monthly difference.
Once you’re above £50,270, each extra pound loses 40% to income tax, 2% to National Insurance and — if you have a Plan 2 student loan — another 9%. That leaves 49p in the pound, so £5,000 becomes roughly £2,450 a year, or about £204 a month. Below the higher-rate threshold you keep 72p in the pound (63p with a student loan).
Enter it in the bonus field to see its real after-tax value — it’s taxed at your highest marginal rate, so a £3,000 bonus is often worth under £1,800 in hand. Treat one-off signing bonuses separately from the recurring comparison: they sweeten year one but don’t change which job pays more in year two.
Yes — pick Scotland in the ‘About you’ card and both offers are compared using the six Scottish bands (19% to 48% in 2026/27). If you’re moving between Scotland and the rest of the UK for the job, run the comparison twice, once with each region, to see the difference the move itself makes.
No. Everything runs in your browser on this page — nothing is saved, sent or shared, and you won’t be asked for an email address.
See what saving even a small slice of the winning salary each month turns into over five or ten years.
