A salary, as
an hourly rate

Turning a salary into an hourly rate

Divide the salary by your hours a week, then by the weeks you are paid for. A salary pays for all 52 weeks, holidays included, so at 37.5 hours a week a £35,000 salary is £17.95 an hour. Divide by 46.4 weeks instead and you get £20.11: what you earn for each hour you actually work. The same salary at 40 hours a week is £16.83 an hour, because the year contains more hours. For part-time work, use the salary you are actually paid.

The paid rate is the one to use for almost everything: comparing job offers, checking the minimum wage, or working out what an hour of unpaid leave would cost you. The rate per hour worked answers a different question, which is how much you earn for the 1,740 hours you are actually at work, out of 1,950 paid ones.

Salary to hourly rate table, 2026/27

Sixteen common salaries as an hourly rate on a 37.5-hour and a 40-hour week, the rate for each hour worked, and the take-home for each paid hour after income tax and National Insurance.

“Per hour worked” is at 37.5 hours and leaves paid leave out; take-home uses 2026/27 rates in England, Wales and Northern Ireland with no pension or student loan. Hold the paid hourly rate against the National Living Wage of £12.71 an hour for workers aged 21 and over. Each linked salary has its own after-tax page.

The bars grow more slowly than the salaries. Doubling a salary from £25,000 to £50,000 takes the gross hourly rate from £12.82 to £25.64, but the take-home hour only from £11.04 to £20.27, because the Personal Allowance is a fixed sum that matters less the more you earn.

Salary thresholds as hourly rates

Every tax threshold is an annual figure, and every one has an hourly equivalent. On a 37.5-hour week the higher rate of 40 percent starts at £25.78 an hour. The table turns each threshold into the hourly rate that reaches it, which is useful when an hourly job and a salaried one sit either side of a line.

The minimum wage as a full-time salary

Salaried staff are covered by the minimum wage too. From April the National Living Wage is £12.71 an hour for workers aged 21 and over, so a full-time salary of £24,784.50 on a 37.5-hour week, or £26,436.80 on 40 hours, is the legal floor.

A salary just above the floor can still fall below it. Unpaid overtime adds hours without adding pay, and salary sacrifice for a pension, a car or a cycle takes pay off the top; the minimum wage applies to what is left. The salary sacrifice calculator warns you when a sacrifice would cross that line.

Holiday, bank holidays and the 46.4-week rate

5.6 weeks is 28 days for someone working five days a week, and an employer can count bank holidays inside it. If your contract gives bank holidays on top, you work fewer weeks than 46.4 and your rate per hour worked is a little higher than the calculator shows. Either way the paid hourly rate does not change, because the salary pays every one of the 52 weeks.

Hourly jobs work the same way: almost every worker is paid for holiday. The one case where an hourly rate is not comparable with your paid rate is rolled-up holiday pay, allowed for irregular-hours and part-year workers, which adds 12.07 percent to every hour instead of paying leave when it is taken. Compare that kind of rate with your rate per hour worked, or divide it by 1.1207 and compare it with your paid rate. The hourly to salary calculator does that conversion for you.

Why your monthly pay is not four weeks of hours

A year has 52 weeks and twelve months, and 52 does not divide by twelve. A month is closer to 4.3 weeks than to four, so four weeks of the hourly rate understates a month of the salary by roughly a week every quarter. A salary avoids that by dividing the year by twelve and paying the same amount every month.

The monthly figures on this page are that division: annual gross over twelve, and annual take-home over twelve. They are not the hourly rate times four.

What the annual figure changes about your tax

Splitting a salary into hours does not create a new tax bill. PAYE is an annual system. The Personal Allowance of £12,570 and the £50,270 higher-rate threshold apply to the yearly salary, then your tax code spreads them across the year. A steady salary and an hourly job with the same annual total reach the same income tax by April.

National Insurance does not settle up at the end of the year. It is charged on each pay period, on earnings above about £1,048 a month or £242 a week. A month of heavy overtime on an hourly job costs more National Insurance than the same money paid evenly as a salary, and it is not refunded. That is the real tax difference when you hold this salary against an hourly job of the same size.

How your salary compares with UK pay

The Office for National Statistics put median annual pay for full-time employees at £39,039 in April 2025, and median hourly pay, excluding overtime, at £19.67. Divided the way this calculator divides it, the median salary is £20.02 an hour on a 37.5-hour week. Median weekly pay was £766.60.

Employees were paid for 32.8 hours a week on average once part-time staff are included, so two salaries of the same size can be very different hourly rates. That is the comparison this page exists to make.

Comparing an hourly job with a salaried offer

• Check the weeks, then the rate. The paid hourly rate includes your holiday, because a salary pays all 52 weeks. An hourly rate with 12.07 percent holiday pay rolled in has to be that much higher to match it, before sick pay or anything else.
• Sick pay and notice. A salary usually carries contractual sick pay and a longer notice period. Hourly work often gets statutory sick pay only.
• Pension. Auto enrolment on an hourly job is assessed on actual earnings each pay period, so weeks with fewer hours can move you out of the scheme.
• Guaranteed hours. The salary is paid whether the week is busy or quiet. An hourly annualised figure assumes those hours are there every week. If they are not, it is a ceiling, not the pay you can count on.

Comparing a salary with freelance rates

A salaried hour and a freelance hour are not the same money. An employer adds holiday pay, sick pay, a pension contribution and employer National Insurance on top of the salary, and pays for your equipment. A freelancer pays for all of that out of their rate and only bills the days there is work. A day rate that matches a salary is usually well above the salary divided into days, which the day rate calculator works through.