UK take-home pay calculator — 2026/27
| Gross annual pay | £24,629 |
| Pension contribution | −£919 |
| Income tax | −£2,228 |
| National Insurance | −£891 |
| Take-home pay | £20,590 |
Uses 2026/27 rates: Personal Allowance £12,570, employee NI 8% to £50,270 then 2%. Pension is modelled as salary sacrifice: it reduces taxable pay for income tax and National Insurance.
At a glance
On £24,629 a year gross, you'd keep about £1,716 a month after income tax, National Insurance and pension.
How reliable is this figure?
This is an estimate, not a payslip preview. It runs on the 2026/27 tax model (Personal Allowance £12,570; employee National Insurance at 8% up to £50,270, then 2%) and the pay dataset named on this page, reviewed 23 September 2026.
Your actual take-home depends on your tax code, contract terms, overtime patterns and any benefits or deductions your employer applies. If a figure here looks surprising, check it against your latest payslip and the HMRC guidance linked under Sources below.
Scotland uses different income tax bands — toggle your nation in the calculator above. Wales follows the England bands.
Worked example: £24,628.50 cleaner salary, 2026/27 (England, auto-enrolment on)
| Gross annual salary | £24,628.50 |
| Auto-enrolment pension (5%) | −£919.43 |
| Income tax (20% band) | −£2,227.81 |
| Employee National Insurance | −£891.13 |
| Annual take-home pay | £20,590.13 |
| Monthly take-home pay | £1,715.84 |
| Weekly take-home | £395.96 |
Assumptions and pay data
- England income tax bands for 2026/27 (6 April 2026 – 5 April 2027)
- Auto-enrolment pension at 5% of qualifying earnings (£6,240–£50,270)
- Employed cleaner at 37.5 hours a week — NOT a self-employed domestic cleaner (different maths)
- No student loan repayments and no other deductions
- Unsocial-hours premiums are wages — include them in the gross you enter
- Two or more jobs: the calculator models one employment — the tax-code split across payrolls can change the real deductions, see the guide
- Scotland has its own bands — use the nation toggle under the calculator if you pay Scottish income tax
Making sense of cleaner take-home pay
Why the calculator starts at 37.5 hours when the median cleaner works 18.5
The default gross of £24,628.50 is £12.63 × 37.5 × 52 — the full-time translation of the median rate, not the median cleaner's pay. The median cleaner's actual year is £233.90 × 52 = £12,162.80. The calculator starts from the rate because the rate is the comparable figure: your contract, your premium, your negotiation all happen in pounds per hour, and the hours are whatever your rotas add up to. Setting the default to 18.5 hours would bake one cleaner's pattern into everyone's calculation.
So put your own hours in, and watch what happens to the deductions. At 18.5 hours — £12,150.06 a year — the gross sits below the £12,570 personal allowance: no income tax, no National Insurance, and the take-home is £11,854.56 a year (£987.88 a month) after the £295.50 auto-enrolment pension. At 25 hours (£16,419) the allowance is exhausted and the deductions begin: £1,247.90 a month. At 30 hours (£19,688.40): £1,434.26 a month. All engine-computed, all on the 2026/27 England model.
The pattern to notice: part-time cleaners keep proportionally more of each pound, because the personal allowance covers a bigger share of a smaller gross. A cleaner deciding whether a fourth contract is worth the evenings should know that the extra hours are taxed at the margin — 20% income tax plus 8% National Insurance on every pound above the allowance — while the first 18.5 hours were barely taxed at all.
Two jobs, one personal allowance
This is the section that costs cleaners real money when it is missed. The calculator models one employment with one £12,570 personal allowance. HMRC, faced with two or three cleaning payrolls, normally puts the whole allowance on the main job — the one you name, or the first one it sees — and the other jobs are taxed at 20% from the first pound under a BR tax code. The calculator's single-employment maths will then understate the deductions.
A concrete case: £8,000 a year on each of two jobs. The main job sits inside the allowance — no tax. The second job, on a BR code, is taxed 20% on the full £8,000: £1,600. The same £16,000 earned in one job would attract 20% of (£16,000 − £12,570) = £686. The split costs £914 a year — unless you ask HMRC to split the allowance across the jobs, which it will do on request, bringing the total back toward the single-job figure.
Auto-enrolment has its own per-job logic: each employment is assessed separately against the £10,000 earnings trigger, so a cleaner earning £8,000 on each of two jobs is not auto-enrolled by either — while the same £16,000 in one job would be. Small pensions, or none, are the quiet consequence of the portfolio pattern; the state pension record, built on National Insurance, works differently and is not affected the same way.
Unsocial-hours premiums go in the gross
The premium for 5am starts and 10pm finishes is wages like any other — income tax, National Insurance and pension all apply — so it goes in the gross you enter, not alongside the answer. Work out the effective hourly rate first: £12.63 plus a typical £2.20 unsocial premium is £14.83 an hour. At 25 hours a week that is £19,279.00 a year gross — £2,860 more than the same 25 hours without the premium (£16,419), and a monthly take-home of £1,410.92 against £1,247.90. The premium is often the most valuable line on a cleaner's payslip, and the one most often left out of take-home estimates.
Where the premium applies to only some hours, split the week before you gross it up. A cleaner working 20 hours at £12.63 (£13,135.20 a year) with a £2.20 premium on 8 unsocial hours adds £915.20 a year — 8 × £2.20 × 52 — for a gross of £14,050.40. Enter the £14,050.40, not the £13,135.20: the calculator cannot tax a premium it cannot see, and the monthly take-home on the full figure is £1,112.89.
One payslip check before you trust any of these numbers: the premium should appear as its own line. Rolled-up holiday pay must appear separately too — the law requires it — and a payslip that folds premium and holiday into a single 'pay' line is hiding the two figures you most need to verify. Ask payroll for the split; the unsocial-hours guide explains what each line should look like.
The Scotland toggle
The Scottish system replaces England's 20/40/45% bands with six thresholds of its own, running from 19% to 48%; National Insurance and the £12,570 personal allowance work the same UK-wide. At the £24,628.50 baseline the Scottish bands are a touch kinder than England's flat 20%: the 19% starter band means a Scottish cleaner takes home £1,719.15 a month against England's £1,715.84. Small, real, and applied automatically by the nation toggle under the calculator.
At part-time hours the toggle barely matters — below the personal allowance there is no income tax in any nation, so an 18.5-hour cleaner takes home the same £987.88 a month north or south of the border. The Scottish bands only start to bite, favourably, once the gross clears £12,570.
What the median does not tell you
The £12.63 median is the middle of every employed cleaner on a payroll: the 6am office cleaner and the self-employed domestic worker are not in the same figure — the domestic worker is not in it at all, because ASHE covers employees only. Commercial contract cleaners, school cleaners, hospital domestics: they are the £12.63. The private-house cleaner setting her own rate is a different trade statistically, whatever the mop.
It also folds in the under-21s, whose lawful youth rates pull the hourly median down — the reason the £12.63 sits 8p below the £12.71 National Living Wage without anyone being underpaid. And it blends the regions: London contract cleaning typically pays above the median, and so do the unsocial-hours premiums that the headline rate excludes. Read the median as the centre of the employed trade, then adjust for your hours, your premium and your postcode.
About this calculator
How the tax engine works
The worked example runs the £24,628.50 median through the 2026/27 England model in deduction order. First the pension: 5% of qualifying earnings (£24,628.50 minus the £6,240 lower limit = £18,388.50), which is £919.43. The model is salary-sacrifice: income tax and National Insurance are charged on pay after the pension comes out, so £24,628.50 − £919.43 = £23,709.07 of taxable pay. Income tax is 20% of pay above the £12,570 personal allowance: (£23,709.07 − £12,570) × 20% = £2,227.81. Employee National Insurance is 8% between £12,570 and £50,270: (£23,709.07 − £12,570) × 8% = £891.13. Subtract all three from £24,628.50 and the take-home is £20,590.13 — £1,715.84 a month, £395.96 a week. Every figure in the worked example is engine-computed, not estimated.
Reviewed and updated
Checked on 24 September 2026: the pay figures against the ONS ASHE 2025 provisional release, the worked example against the 2026/27 England tax model. Put your real rate and your real hours in — a calculator fed with one contract's version of the job returns one contract's version of the pay.
Cleaner take-home pay FAQs
What is the take-home pay of a cleaner on £12.63 an hour?
At a 37.5-hour week — £24,628.50 a year — the take-home is £20,590.13 a year, £1,715.84 a month, £395.96 a week, under the 2026/27 England model with auto-enrolment pension on. That is after £2,227.81 of income tax, £891.13 of National Insurance and £919.43 of pension contributions.
Most cleaners work far fewer hours, though: at the median 18.5-hour week the monthly take-home is £987.88 — with no income tax or National Insurance at all.
The median cleaner works 18.5 hours — what is the take-home on that?
At 18.5 hours a week the gross is £12,150.06 a year, which sits below the £12,570 personal allowance — so there is no income tax and no National Insurance. The take-home is £11,854.56 a year, £987.88 a month, £227.97 a week, after the £295.50 auto-enrolment pension.
This is why the hours matter more than the rate in cleaning: the first £12,570 is barely taxed, and every hour added above it is taxed at the margin.
I have two cleaning jobs — how does the tax work?
HMRC normally puts the full £12,570 personal allowance on your main job, and the second job is taxed at 20% from the first pound under a BR tax code. Two jobs at £8,000 each cost £1,600 in tax on the second job; the same £16,000 in one job would cost £686.
You can ask HMRC to split the allowance across your jobs, which brings the total back toward the single-job figure. The calculator models one employment, so add both jobs' pay together for the total — then check the tax-code split has not cost you money.
Do I include unsocial-hours premiums in the calculator?
Yes — gross up the effective rate and enter that. £12.63 plus a typical £2.20 unsocial premium is £14.83 an hour: at 25 hours a week that is £19,279.00 a year gross.
The premium is wages like any other — income tax, National Insurance and pension all apply — so there is no version of the maths that puts it in untaxed. Check the payslip shows the premium as its own line rather than folded invisibly into the rate.
I pay Scottish income tax — does the calculator work for me?
Yes — use the nation toggle under the calculator. Scotland's six-band system (19% to 48%) replaces England's 20/40/45% bands; the £12,570 personal allowance, National Insurance and auto-enrolment pension are UK-wide and unchanged.
At £24,628.50 the Scottish bands leave you slightly better off: £1,719.15 a month against England's £1,715.84. Below the personal allowance — the 18.5-hour week, for instance — the toggle makes no difference at all.
I am a self-employed domestic cleaner — can I use this calculator?
No — the maths is different. This calculator models an employed cleaner: PAYE income tax, Class 1 National Insurance, auto-enrolment pension. Self-employed domestic cleaners pay income tax through self-assessment, pay Class 2 and Class 4 National Insurance, have no auto-enrolment, and deduct allowable expenses — products, equipment, travel between clients — before tax is charged.
Running self-employed income through an employee calculator misstates every deduction. The ONS median excludes the self-employed too — ASHE covers employees only.
Does the calculator include my pension?
Yes — auto-enrolment at 5% of qualifying earnings (£6,240–£50,270) is switched on by default. On the £24,628.50 baseline that is £919.43 a year.
With several small contracts, note that each job is assessed separately against the £10,000 auto-enrolment trigger: two jobs at £8,000 each enrol you in neither, while £16,000 in one job would enrol you. The portfolio pattern quietly shrinks workplace pension saving.
What about student loan repayments?
This calculator does not deduct student loan repayments — the worked example assumes no student loan. Repayments come off after tax and National Insurance as 9% of earnings above your plan's threshold.
On the £24,628.50 baseline there is nothing to pay on either main plan: it sits below the Plan 2 threshold (£28,470) and just below the Plan 5 threshold (£25,000). If your total from all contracts clears your plan's threshold, work out the repayment on the student loan page and subtract it from the take-home shown here.
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Sources
- ONS — Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings 2025 (provisional). SOC 2020 code 9223 (cleaners and domestics), all employees, pay period including April 2025: median £12.63 per hour, £233.90 per week; £24,628.50 is £12.63 × 37.5 hours × 52. Accessed 24 September 2026.
- GOV.UK — Income Tax rates and allowances 2026/27. Personal Allowance £12,570; 20% to £50,270, 40% to £125,140, 45% above; bands frozen to 5 April 2031. Accessed 24 September 2026.
- GOV.UK — National Insurance rates 2026/27. Employee Class 1: 8% on £12,570–£50,270, 2% above. Accessed 24 September 2026.
- GOV.UK — National Minimum Wage and National Living Wage rates. National Living Wage £12.71 an hour for workers aged 21 and over from 1 April 2026 — the floor the £12.63 ONS median sits 8p below, explained by under-21s in the sample on lawful lower youth rates. Accessed 24 September 2026.
- GOV.UK — Holiday pay and entitlement reforms from 1 January 2024. Irregular-hours workers accrue holiday at 12.07% of hours worked for leave years from 1 April 2024 — the accrual behind part-time cleaner holiday pay. Accessed 24 September 2026.
These are estimates for guidance only, not financial advice. Figures are taken from the sources listed above and were correct when this page was reviewed. Your actual pay depends on your contract, hours and tax code — check your payslip and HMRC guidance if anything looks off.