Student Loan Repayment Calculator

Which plan am I on?

Your plan is decided by where you lived when you studied and when your course started — not by choice, and not by your current address. Studied in England or Wales with a course starting before September 2012: Plan 1. Between September 2012 and July 2023: Plan 2. In England with a course starting from August 2023: Plan 5. Studied in Scotland in any year: Plan 4. Took a masters or doctoral loan anywhere in the UK: the postgraduate plan, on top of whichever undergraduate plan applies.

The Student Loans Company writes to you, and your PAYE coding reflects your plan, but plenty of graduates never check. It matters more than most realise: at £35,000, Plan 4 costs (35,000 − 33,795) × 9% = £108.45 a year while Plan 5 costs £900. Same salary, same country of work, eight times the repayment — determined entirely by where the degree was taken.

If you studied in two nations — an undergraduate degree in England then a masters in Scotland, say — you can hold two undergraduate plans, and repayments are taken against the lower threshold. Check your SLC account rather than guessing.

• Plan 1: England/Wales, pre-September 2012 courses.
• Plan 2: England/Wales, September 2012 to July 2023.
• Plan 5: England, courses from August 2023 — lower threshold, 40-year write-off.
• Plan 4: Scotland, all years. Postgraduate: UK-wide, stacks on top.

The Plan 2 threshold freeze

The Plan 2 threshold of £29,385 is frozen from April 2027 to April 2030. No threshold has a freeze quite like it: three full years during which every pay rise pushes more of a graduate's salary into the 9% repayment zone. A Plan 2 graduate on £35,000 today pays £505.35 a year; give them 3% annual rises and by 2030 they are on roughly £38,300 paying over £800 — without the threshold moving a pound.

The freeze is fiscal drag aimed squarely at graduates. Income tax thresholds are frozen to 2031 too, so the same pay rise is simultaneously dragged into higher tax bands and higher loan repayments. For a basic-rate taxpayer on Plan 2, each extra £1 above £29,385 already costs 20p of tax, 8p of National Insurance and 9p of loan repayment — 37p in the pound before the freeze does its work.

Plan 5 graduates have it tougher: their threshold is lower at £25,000 and their loans are not written off for 40 years, meaning far more borrowers will repay in full. If you are choosing between courses starting now, the plan you will land on is part of the price.

Stacking: postgraduate plus an undergraduate plan

Postgraduate loans are not instead of your undergraduate plan — they are as well as. A graduate with a Plan 2 undergraduate loan and a masters loan repays 9% above £29,385 and 6% above £21,000, both deducted from the same payslip. The two calculations ignore each other completely.

On £35,000 that means £505.35 a year for the undergraduate loan plus (35,000 − 21,000) × 6% = £840 a year for the postgraduate loan: £1,345.35 combined, or £112.11 a month. Add 20% tax and 8% National Insurance and the graduate keeps barely half of each marginal pound between £29,385 and £50,270.

This is the single most common repayment shock: graduates budget for one deduction and get two. If you are considering a masters, price the stacked repayment on your expected starting salary before you apply — it is a material part of the degree's true cost.

• Postgraduate repayments stack on top of undergraduate plan repayments.
• £35,000 with Plan 2 + postgraduate: £505.35 + £840 = £1,345.35 a year (£112.11/month).
• The two thresholds (£29,385 and £21,000) are applied independently.
• Budget for both before committing to postgraduate study.

Repayments are not quite a tax — and not quite a debt

Repayments behave like a tax in one crucial way: they do not reduce your taxable income. Pension contributions by salary sacrifice cut your tax bill; student loan repayments do not — they come out of taxed pay. But they differ from tax in that they stop: once the loan is repaid, or once the write-off point arrives, the 9% disappears and your take-home jumps.

The write-off is the part that makes student loans unlike any commercial debt. Plan 1 and Plan 2 balances are written off 30 years after you enter repayment; Plan 5 after 40 years. Most Plan 2 borrowers will never clear their balance — the Institute for Fiscal Studies has long estimated only a minority repay in full — which means for most graduates the loan is effectively a 30-year graduate tax, not a debt to be cleared.

That reframes the overpayment question. Overpaying a loan you will never clear buys you nothing: the write-off wipes the remainder regardless. Voluntary overpayments only make sense if you are on track to repay in full — typically high earners early in their careers. Everyone else should treat the 9% as a fixed cost of working and direct spare cash toward pensions or savings instead.

What lenders, employers and HMRC see

Mortgage lenders treat your student loan repayment as a committed outgoing, like a bill — it reduces the income they think you have available, which reduces what you can borrow. A £112-a-month stacked repayment can cut borrowing capacity by tens of thousands. It does not appear as a debt on your credit file, though, and it does not affect your credit score.

Employers deduct repayments through PAYE automatically once HMRC tells them your plan; you do not need to do anything when you start a job beyond confirming the plan is right. If you are self-employed, repayments are calculated through Self Assessment at the same 9% and 6% rates.

Moving abroad does not pause the obligation. You must tell the Student Loans Company, and repayments are set against country-specific thresholds — ignore it and arrears accrue. The threshold table on this page is UK-only; the SLC publishes overseas thresholds separately.

What it covers, and what it does not

This calculator works out UK student loan repayments for employees and the self-employed across all five plans: Plan 1, Plan 2, Plan 4, Plan 5 and postgraduate. Enter your gross annual salary, select your plan — or both plans if you hold an undergraduate and a postgraduate loan — and it returns your repayment per year and per month at 2026/27 thresholds and rates.

It does not calculate interest accrual or project when your loan will be cleared or written off; those depend on future earnings, future thresholds and the interest rate on your plan. For the effect of repayments on your overall pay packet, carry the annual figure into the take-home pay calculator.