Lifetime ISA calculator 2026/27
What the 25.00% bonus adds — and what the 25.00% withdrawal charge takes back, which is more, because the two rates are applied to different amounts.
Calculator
The Lifetime ISA
New money paid in during 2026/27. The bonus is worked out on this, up to £4,000 a year, and it is paid monthly rather than in one go at the end of the year.
What it is worth today, including earlier years’ payments, earlier bonuses and any growth. None of it uses this year’s allowance — and all of it is inside the withdrawal charge if the money comes out for the wrong reason.
Whole years. This decides which of the age limits still apply to you. The box stops at 60 because that is the age from which every withdrawal is charge-free — not the oldest a holder can be, but the last age at which any answer on this page changes.
You, and what you would use it for
The purchase price, not the deposit. A first home at or under £450,000 can be bought with the fund charge-free; a pound over and the whole withdrawal is charged.
Used only by the pension comparison further down. It changes nothing about the bonus, the charge or the age limits — those depend on none of it.
Also for the pension comparison only. Income tax is devolved and pension relief follows it; the Lifetime ISA bonus is the same everywhere in the UK.
Which year’s limits, bonus rate, charge rate, property cap and age limits are applied.
A Lifetime ISA payment counts against your overall £20,000 ISA limit. £4,000.00 in here leaves £16,000.00 for cash, stocks and shares and innovative finance ISAs put together — and on 6 April whatever is unused is gone, because an ISA allowance does not carry forward. The bonus is not a subscription and uses none of it. Where the rest of your allowance has gone is the ISA allowance calculator.
At 30 you can still open one: the last age at which an account may be opened is 40. Payments into an account you already hold can continue for another 20 years, until 50. Charge-free access for any purpose starts at 60, which is 30 years away.
Nothing you type is transmitted or stored: this page is a static file and the arithmetic runs in this tab. A share link is the exception — it carries your figures in the URL. What that means. The bonus rate is 25.00% and the withdrawal charge 25.00%; both are read from the rules files rather than typed into this page.
The bonus, the charge, and the three ways out without one
£4,000.00 paid in, plus the 25.00% government bonus, puts this in the account
£5,000.00
The bonus is £1,000.00, capped at £1,000 a year and paid monthly on the payments made the month before, rather than in one sum at the end of the year. It is not a subscription: it uses none of your £20,000 ISA allowance, which is why the account can end the year holding more than the limit you paid into it.
Take that £5,000.00 out for anything other than the three permitted reasons and you keep
£3,750.00
The withdrawal charge is 25.00% of the withdrawal — £1,250.00 — not 25.00% of the bonus.
That is £250.00 less than the £4,000.00 you paid in. The charge does not merely hand the bonus back. It is charged on a bigger number than the bonus was, so it reaches past the bonus and into your own capital. A 25.00% bonus followed by a 25.00% charge does not cancel out, and the amount it costs is the figure above.
Three ways the money comes out charge-free. Everything else is charged.
The account holds £5,000.00 — what was already there, plus this year’s payment and its bonus. What that is worth to you depends entirely on which of these you are doing.
| Taking it out for | Charged? | What reaches you |
|---|---|---|
| A first home | No — £300,000.00 is at or under the £450,000 cap. | £5,000.00 |
| Anything at all, from 60 | No, once you reach 60. From here that is 30 years away. | £5,000.00 |
| Terminal illness | No. Where the account holder is terminally ill and has been given a prognosis of less than 12 months to live, the fund comes out charge-free. The period is read from the tax-year rules beside the withdrawal charge rather than typed into this page. | £5,000.00 |
| Anything else | Yes, at 25.00% of the whole withdrawal. A car, a second property, a job loss, a wedding, moving the money to a better rate somewhere else — the charge does not distinguish between them. | £3,750.00 |
On the whole £5,000.00, that charge is £1,250.00. The “less than you paid in” figure in the panel above is stated against this year’s payment alone, because that is the only money whose make-up this page knows exactly — an older balance may hold growth as well as bonuses, and this page cannot see which is which.
The property cap, against the home you actually want
| Price of the home | £300,000.00 |
|---|---|
| Property price cap for 2026/27 | £450,000.00 |
| Under the cap by | £150,000.00 |
Inside the cap, so the fund buys the home charge-free. The cap is on the purchase price, not on the deposit and not on the mortgage, and it is a hard edge rather than a taper: one pound above it and the entire withdrawal is charged, not just the part above. The cap has not been raised since Lifetime ISAs were introduced in April 2017, while house prices have not stood still. Whether that puts a first home where you live inside or outside it is a question this page can only answer with the price you type into it.
What your age rules in and out
| Age limit | Where you are at 30 |
|---|---|
| Open one: from 18, and no longer from 40 | You can still open one. That window closes on your 40th birthday. |
| Pay in: until 50 | You can pay in for another 20 years, and every payment inside the annual limit earns the bonus. |
| Charge-free for any purpose: from 60 | 30 years away. Until then, only a qualifying first home or terminal illness avoids the charge. |
The gap between the second and third rows is the part worth noticing: there are 10 years between the last payment and the first charge-free withdrawal, during which the account can be held and neither added to nor drawn on without a charge.
The bonus and basic-rate pension relief are the same uplift. What differs is everything else.
The most common thing said about a Lifetime ISA is that its 25.00% bonus beats a pension’s tax relief. On the same money it does not, and the page measures that rather than asserting it: £4,000.00 handed over buys £5,000.00 inside a Lifetime ISA and £5,000.00 inside a personal pension, where the provider grosses the payment up at 20.00%.
The same amount, to the penny. A bonus at 25.00% of what you pay and relief at 20.00% of what lands are two descriptions of one uplift, which is why arguing about which percentage is larger settles nothing.
| What differs | On your figures |
|---|---|
| Relief above the basic rate, claimed through the tax return | Nothing, at £35,000.00. All the relief arrives at source, which is exactly why the two uplifts match for a basic-rate taxpayer. Raise the salary above the basic-rate limit and a figure appears here that a Lifetime ISA has no equivalent for. |
| National Insurance | Sacrificing £5,000.00 of salary into a pension instead would cut employee National Insurance by £400.00. A Lifetime ISA is funded out of pay that has already borne it, and there is no mechanism to get it back. What a sacrifice costs in take-home pay is the salary sacrifice calculator. |
| Employer contributions | A Lifetime ISA cannot receive one. There is no figure for this on the page because an employer’s contribution is a term of a contract rather than a published rate — but for anyone with a match available it is usually the largest number in this table, and it exists on only one side of it. |
| Tax on the way out | A Lifetime ISA comes out wholly tax-free. 25.00% of a pension does, and the rest is taxable income at whatever rate applies then. The tax that meets a pension pot is the pension drawdown calculator. |
| When you can reach it | A Lifetime ISA is charge-free for any purpose from 60, and before that only for a qualifying first home or terminal illness. A pension has its own normal minimum access age: ordinarily 55 today, scheduled to become 57 from 6 April 2028. Protected ages, ill-health access and uniformed-services exceptions can differ. |
This page compares two wrappers. It does not tell you to use either, and it cannot: the answer turns on facts about your employer, your age, whether you are buying a first home and when you would need the money — several of which no calculator has.
Where the figures come from
The rates and limits on this page are statutory. The annual limit, the bonus rate, the maximum bonus, the withdrawal charge rate, the property price cap and all four age limits are published figures, read from this site’s rules files, checked against gov.uk and dated in the methodology below. Not one of them is typed into this page. What has not been verified is any answer this page produces, and no named person has signed the check off.
Read the limits at gov.uk — Lifetime ISA. If that page and this one disagree, gov.uk is right and the corrections log is where to say so.
Four things this page does not know
- What the account will be worth. There is no growth rate anywhere on this page and no projection in it. Every figure above is a published rate applied to money you typed. What a sheltered pot does over a term is the stocks and shares ISA calculator.
- What is already in the account, or what you have paid in before. The balance above is the one you typed. Nothing here reads an account, and a payment you have forgotten is a payment this page has forgotten too.
- Whether you are a first-time buyer. The charge-free first home route has conditions beyond the price — you must not have owned a home before, the account must have been open long enough, and the purchase runs through a conveyancer. The price cap is the one this page can check.
- What the limits will be later. Everything here uses 2026/27. The cap, the rates and the ages all move by policy, and this site uses no figures for tax years the government has not published.
Worked example: £4,000 in, and a first home above the cap
Maya is 34. She has £12,000 in a Lifetime ISA from earlier years and pays in the full £4,000 again this year. She earns £60,000, and the flat she wants is £480,000.
- The bonus. £4,000.00 is inside the £4,000 annual limit, so it earns 25.00% — £1,000.00, paid monthly rather than in one sum. Her payment uses £4,000.00 of the £20,000 she can put into ISAs this year, leaving £16,000.00 for every other kind of ISA — and on 6 April that remainder is gone, because an ISA allowance does not carry forward. The bonus itself uses none of it.
- The flat is over the cap. £480,000 is £30,000.00 above the £450,000 property price cap, so buying it with the fund is not a charge-free withdrawal. The cap is a hard edge and not a taper: the charge falls on the whole withdrawal, not on the part above the cap.
- So the charge applies. The account holds £17,000.00. Taking all of it costs 25.00% of the withdrawal — £4,250.00 — leaving £12,750.00.
- On this year’s money alone, she ends below what she paid in. £4,000.00 became £5,000.00 with the bonus; a charged withdrawal of that returns £3,750.00, which is £250.00 less than she put in. The charge did not simply take the bonus back — it was charged on a larger number than the bonus was, so it reached past it.
- At 34 she has time, but not unlimited time. She can still pay in for another 16 years, until 50. Charge-free access for any purpose is 26 years away, at 60. A new Lifetime ISA could no longer be opened from 40, though the one she has is unaffected by that.
- The same £4,000.00 into a pension. It buys £5,000.00 there against £5,000.00 in the Lifetime ISA — the same uplift, described two ways. At £60,000 the pension route also carries £1,000.00 of relief claimed through her tax return, which the bonus has no equivalent for, and a salary sacrifice of the same amount would save £100.00 of employee National Insurance on top. Against that, the pension cannot buy her a first home at any age and 25.00% of it is the only part that comes out tax-free.
| Figure | Amount |
|---|---|
| Paid in this year | £4,000.00 |
| Bonus on it | £1,000.00 |
| Whole fund, including earlier years | £17,000.00 |
| Charge on withdrawing all of it for this flat | −£4,250.00 |
| What reaches her | £12,750.00 |
| Shortfall against this year’s payment alone | −£250.00 |
Every figure above is a published rate or limit applied to numbers Maya supplied. Nothing is projected, nothing is grown, and no return is assumed anywhere — which is why the arithmetic can be checked line by line rather than believed.
Methodology: where every rate, cap and age comes from
The arithmetic, in full
- The bonus is a rate on the payment, capped twice. Only the part of the payment inside the £4,000 annual limit earns anything, and the bonus on it is capped at the published maximum of £1,000. Those are three separate published figures rather than one figure and two derivations, and this page reads all three.
- The charge is a rate on the withdrawal. Not on the bonus, not on the growth, not on the excess over some threshold: on the whole amount taken out. That is the entire reason a 25.00% bonus and a 25.00% charge do not cancel — the second is applied to a larger number than the first was, so it reaches past the bonus into the payment underneath it.
- The shortfall is measured against this year’s payment only. An older balance can hold growth as well as earlier bonuses, in a mix this page cannot see, and a fund that has grown a great deal may return more than was paid into it even after the charge. So the claim is made where both ends are exact and nowhere else.
- The property test is a comparison, not a taper. A first home at or under £450,000 is charge-free; a pound above it and the whole withdrawal is charged. There is no partial relief and no apportionment.
- The age limits are three separate tests. One on opening an account, one on paying into one, one on taking money out. They are read from the rules file the way the legislation frames them — the last two are the first age at which something is no longer possible — so the comparisons are strict rather than inclusive on that side.
Limits for 2026/27
| Figure | Amount |
|---|---|
| Annual Lifetime ISA payment limit | £4,000.00 |
| Government bonus rate | 25.00% |
| Maximum bonus a year | £1,000.00 |
| Withdrawal charge rate | 25.00% |
| Property price cap | £450,000.00 |
| Overall ISA subscription limit this counts against | £20,000.00 |
| Age one may be opened, from / no longer from | 18 / 40 |
| Payments may no longer be made from | 50 |
| Charge-free for any purpose from | 60 |
Not one of those figures is typed into this page. All of them are read from packages/tax-core/src/rules/ at build time, which is what makes the sentences around them impossible to disagree with the calculator. This page was declined once for exactly that reason, before the last six of them were in the rules files.
Sources
- gov.uk — Lifetime ISA
- gov.uk — Individual Savings Accounts (ISAs)
- gov.uk — Manage Lifetime ISA withdrawals and bonus payments
- gov.uk — Tax on your private pension contributions
Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
What has been verified, and what has not
The rates, limits, the property cap and the four age limits used here were checked against gov.uk on 12 August 2026, figure by figure. That check covers the published figures only. It does not verify any result this page produces, and no named person has signed the check off yet.
What this calculator does not do
- It projects nothing. There is no growth rate, no term and no future value anywhere on the page — every figure is a published rate applied to money you typed. What a sheltered pot does over a term, and what the shelter saves in tax, is the stocks and shares ISA calculator.
- It does not test whether you are a first-time buyer. The charge-free first home route has conditions beyond the price: not having owned a home before, the account having been open long enough, buying with a mortgage, and the money going through a conveyancer. The price cap is the condition this page can check against a number.
- It does not quote the terminal illness test. That ground turns on a medical prognosis measured in months, and the period is not held in this site’s rules files. The mechanic is on the page and the figure is deliberately absent — gov.uk states it.
- It does not price a pension’s access age. A pension has one and it is statutory, and it is not in this site’s rules files either, so the comparison describes the difference without claiming which wrapper opens first.
- It has no opinion. Whether a Lifetime ISA suits you, and whether a pension would suit you better, depends on your employer, your age, whether you are buying a first home and when you would need the money. This page computes; it does not advise.
Nothing you type is transmitted or stored — there is no application server and no database. A share link is the exception: it carries your figures in the URL. What that means.
Lifetime ISA questions
- How much is the Lifetime ISA bonus?
25.00% of what you pay in, on up to £4,000 a tax year, so a maximum of £1,000. It is paid monthly on the payments made the previous month rather than as one sum at the end of the year, so money paid in late in the tax year earns its bonus later too. The bonus is not a subscription: it uses none of your £20,000 ISA allowance, which is why a full year's payment can leave the account holding £5,000.
- What is the penalty for taking money out of a Lifetime ISA?
25.00% of the amount withdrawn — not 25.00% of the bonus. That distinction is the whole thing: pay in £4,000, collect £1,000, and the account holds £5,000. Withdraw all of it for something that is not a first home, age 60 or terminal illness and the charge is £1,250, leaving £3,750 — £250 less than you put in. The charge is applied to a bigger number than the bonus was, so it takes back more than the bonus gave, and the difference comes out of your own capital rather than out of the government's.
- When can I take the money out without a charge?
Three circumstances and no others: buying a first home at or under £450,000, being 60 or over, or terminal illness where the prognosis meets the test gov.uk sets. Everything else is charged — a car, a second property, a job loss, a wedding, or simply wanting the money back. There is no hardship exception and no discretion.
- What if the house I want costs more than £450,000?
Then the fund cannot be used for it charge-free, and the charge falls on the whole withdrawal rather than on the part above the cap. There is no taper and no partial relief: a pound over the cap is treated the same as a hundred thousand over it. The cap is on the purchase price rather than the deposit or the mortgage, and it has not been raised since Lifetime ISAs were introduced in April 2017 while house prices have not stood still — which is why the calculator asks for the price of the home you actually want rather than telling you the cap is comfortable.
- What are the age limits on a Lifetime ISA?
Three of them, and they are separate tests. One can be opened from 18 and no longer from 40. Payments — and therefore bonuses — can continue until 50, including into an account opened years earlier. From 60 any withdrawal is charge-free whatever it is for. The one most often confused is the second: being past 40 stops you opening a new account, not paying into one you already have.
- Does a Lifetime ISA use up my ISA allowance?
Yes. What you pay into a Lifetime ISA counts against the same £20,000 overall ISA limit as a cash or stocks and shares ISA, so a full £4,000 payment leaves £16,000 for everything else. The bonus does not count, because it is not a subscription. Only one Lifetime ISA can be paid into in a tax year, which is the exception to the rule that lets you pay into more than one ISA of the same type.
- Is a Lifetime ISA better than a pension?
This page will not answer that, and any page that does is guessing about your employer. What it can do is separate the part that is arithmetic from the part that is not. The 25.00% bonus and basic-rate relief grossed up are the same uplift on the same money — the calculator shows both figures rather than asserting it. The differences are elsewhere: only a salary sacrifice reduces National Insurance, only a pension can receive an employer contribution, a pension gives relief above the basic rate that the bonus has no equivalent for, and a Lifetime ISA comes out wholly tax-free where 25.00% of a pension does. Against all that, a pension cannot buy a first home at any age.
- Can I transfer a Lifetime ISA to another ISA?
Moving money out of a Lifetime ISA into another kind of ISA is a withdrawal, and it is charged like any other withdrawal that is not one of the three permitted circumstances. Transferring between two Lifetime ISAs is not, and does not use allowance. That is a distinction worth checking with the provider before starting, because the two are described with the same word and one of them costs 25.00% of the balance.
- What happens to the bonus if I pay in more than the annual limit?
Only the part inside £4,000 earns a bonus. This calculator reports the excess rather than quietly capping the figure, because an over-subscription is something to act on: tell the provider rather than waiting, since HMRC identifies over-subscriptions after the tax year ends and removes the excess.