National insurance calculator
What National Insurance is actually charged on your pay — yours and your employer’s, shown separately, because theirs is the larger of the two and is a cost on top of your salary rather than a deduction from it.
Calculator
Your pay before any deduction — the figure on your contract or job advert, not the amount that reaches your bank account. National Insurance is charged on the whole of it: the personal allowance has nothing to do with this calculation.
A company director pays exactly the same Class 1 as any other employee. What differs is the earnings period — theirs is the whole tax year rather than each pay period — which changes when it is deducted rather than how much.
National Insurance rates and thresholds are set at Westminster and change in April. They are the same everywhere in the UK.
National Insurance is not devolved. There is no region to choose here and nothing on this page would move if there were: a Scottish taxpayer, a Welsh one and an English one on the same pay contribute the same National Insurance to the penny. Only income tax differs, and that is on the take-home pay pages.
Employee Class 1 starts at £12,570 of pay and the rate falls from 8.00% to 2.00% above £50,270. Your employer pays their own charge of 15.00% from £5,000, with no upper limit at all.
Your National Insurance, and your employer’s, charge by charge
Your National Insurance on £60,000.00: £3,210.60 a year
Your employer pays another £8,250.00 on the same pay — 2.6 times what you pay. Between you, HMRC collects £11,460.60 of National Insurance on this job, and the whole employment costs your employer £68,250.00 a year.
This page computes National Insurance only. It is not a take-home pay calculator: there is no income tax figure anywhere on it, no student loan repayment and no pension contribution. For what actually reaches your bank account, use the take-home pay calculator.
Your employer’s National Insurance — the bigger half
This is not deducted from your pay. It never appears on your payslip and it does not reduce what you take home. It is a separate charge your employer pays on top of your salary, which is why the job costs them £68,250.00 rather than £60,000.00. It is called secondary Class 1, your own is called primary Class 1, and they are two different contributions on the same pay rather than two halves of one.
| Band | Pay in this band | Rate | National Insurance |
|---|---|---|---|
| Secondary rate | £55,000.00 | 15.00% | £8,250.00 |
| Employer National Insurance | £8,250.00 |
There is no upper limit on the employer charge and it starts lower than yours. It runs at 15.00% on everything above £5,000 — below the £12,570 where your own contributions begin, so there is a stretch of pay on which your employer contributes and you do not — and it keeps running at the same rate however much you earn. Your rate stops rising at £50,270; theirs never does.
Salary sacrifice reduces the pay both charges are worked out on, so today it saves National Insurance on both sides — the salary sacrifice calculator prices it. That is not permanent, and this page will not state it as though it were: from April 2029 only the first £2,000 a year of employee pension contributions made through salary sacrifice keeps its National Insurance exemption, with employer and employee National Insurance due above that and income tax relief unaffected. No tax year offered here reaches that date, so nothing above reflects it. gov.uk sets out the change.
Who really bears this is argued about, and that argument is not a tax rule. The legal position is unambiguous — the employer owes it, HMRC collects it from them, and it is not your money. Many economists hold that over time the cost is passed into wages, so a job that costs £68,250.00 to fill might have paid more without the charge. That is a claim about how pay is set, it is contested, and this page prices the tax rather than the argument.
Your own National Insurance, band by band
Employee Class 1 is charged on your whole pay above the primary threshold, not on pay after the personal allowance. The two thresholds happen to be the same figure this year, which makes them look like one; they are two, they have moved independently before, and nothing that changes your personal allowance — a tax code, the taper that begins at £100,000, a marriage allowance transfer — changes this calculation by a penny.
| Band | Pay in this band | Rate | National Insurance |
|---|---|---|---|
| Main rate | £37,700.00 | 8.00% | £3,016.00 |
| Upper rate | £9,730.00 | 2.00% | £194.60 |
| Your National Insurance | £3,210.60 |
National Insurance on your next £1
- You pay 2.00% of it — measured by asking the engine what one more pound costs, not by comparing your pay to a threshold and reading a rate off a table. At exactly the £50,270 limit those two methods disagree, and the measured one is right.
- Your employer pays 15.00% of the same pound, on top of it. Their rate does not step down at any level of pay.
- Charged on that pound altogether: 17.00% — of which your payslip shows you 2.00% and nothing tells you about the rest.
Your National Insurance rate has gone down because you earn more. That is not a mistake and it is not a rounding artefact. Above £50,270 the rate falls from 8.00% to 2.00%, and it is one of the very few rates in the UK system that moves in that direction as income rises. It is also why a pay rise can be worth more per pound to a better-paid person than to a worse-paid one. Nothing equivalent happens to your employer. Their charge has no upper limit, so the same pound that costs you 2.00% costs them 15.00% — the gap between the two sides is widest exactly here.
What National Insurance is not charged on
National Insurance is a charge on work — earnings from employment and profits from self-employment — and on nothing else. None of the following attracts National Insurance at any rate, however much of it you have:
- Dividends, including a company director’s own. This is the whole reason the salary-and-dividend split is worth thinking about, and the salary and dividend calculator prices it with both National Insurances in the arithmetic.
- Savings interest. Income tax may be due on it; National Insurance is not.
- Rental income from property, unless the letting amounts to a trade.
- Pension income. Money coming out of a pension bears income tax and no National Insurance, which is why a pension withdrawal and a salary of the same size are not taxed the same. The pension drawdown calculator works out the income tax.
You also stop paying employee Class 1 once you reach State Pension age, even if you carry on working — your employer does not, and carries on paying their charge on your pay. Nobody under 16 pays it either. Neither of those is modelled here: this page has no age box, so it prices the contributions of somebody of working age and says so rather than guessing.
And National Insurance is charged on your whole pay, not on pay after the personal allowance — the two thresholds coinciding at £12,570 this year is a coincidence of figures, not one rule. Nothing that changes your personal allowance changes your National Insurance.
The same National Insurance, at other levels of pay
Employee and employer Class 1 for 2026/27. Read the two figure columns against each other: the employer’s charge starts earlier, never steps down, and overtakes the employee’s well before an ordinary salary.
| Pay | You pay | Your employer pays | Employer charge as a share of pay |
|---|---|---|---|
| £5,000 | £0.00 | £0.00 | 0.00% |
| £10,000 | £0.00 | £750.00 | 7.50% |
| £25,000 | £994.40 | £3,000.00 | 12.00% |
| £50,270 | £3,016.00 | £6,790.50 | 13.51% |
| £60,000 | £3,210.60 | £8,250.00 | 13.75% |
| £100,000 | £4,010.60 | £14,250.00 | 14.25% |
Six things this figure does not know
It is one job or one trade, not your whole year
National Insurance is charged per employment, and each employment gets its own thresholds — so two jobs of £30,000.00 each do not produce the same contributions as one of £60,000.00. There is a statutory annual maximum for somebody with several employments, and there are rules for paying Class 1 and Class 4 in the same year, and none of that is modelled here. Anybody with more than one source of earnings should treat this page as pricing one of them.
It does not know your National Insurance category letter
Every employment has a category letter, and this page prices the ordinary one. The reliefs that use other letters — for employees under 21, apprentices under 25, veterans, freeport and investment zone employees — reduce or remove the employer charge, sometimes to nothing, and none of them are in this software. The Employment Allowance, which lets many employers set a fixed amount against their secondary Class 1 bill for the whole year, is not modelled either. Each of those makes the employer figure above too high for the employers they apply to.
It does not know your age
Nobody under 16 pays employee Class 1, and nobody pays it after reaching State Pension age — while the employer keeps paying theirs throughout. There is no age box on this page, so it prices somebody of working age. If you are over State Pension age and still working, your own figure above should be nothing and your employer’s is unchanged.
It is an annual figure, and only a director is charged annually
Real employee National Insurance is worked out on each pay period separately against HMRC’s published weekly or monthly thresholds, and is not cumulative across the year for most employees. So a month containing a bonus attracts more National Insurance than a twelfth of the figure above, a lean month attracts less, and the two do not necessarily cancel. Switch the status selector to company director to see the other rule modelled in full. This page uses HMRC’s published annual thresholds, which are deliberately not the weekly figures multiplied by 52.
It says nothing about your State Pension record
What you pay and what you are credited with are different questions. Qualifying years are governed by the lower earnings limit and by credits, neither of which is in this software at all — somebody earning between the lower earnings limit and the primary threshold pays nothing and still earns a qualifying year, and this page has no way to tell them so from their own figures. Check your record on gov.uk rather than inferring it from any calculator.
It is National Insurance, and nothing else on the payslip
No income tax — deliberately, because that is what the take-home pay and self-employed calculators are for. No student loan or postgraduate loan repayment. No pension contribution, no tax code, no benefit in kind, and no Class 1A on benefits in kind, which an employer pays separately on things like a company car.
Worked example: the same pay rise, and why the better-paid employee pays less National Insurance on it
Two employees get the same £5,000 pay rise. The better-paid one pays £100.00 of National Insurance on it and the worse-paid one pays £400.00 — and their employer pays exactly the same £750.00 on each. That is not a quirk of rounding. It is what the upper earnings limit does, and it is the single most counter-intuitive thing about National Insurance.
Aisha earns £30,000. Her own National Insurance is £1,394.40 a year. Her employer pays a further £3,750.00 on top of her salary, so employing her costs £33,750.00. Her pay is below the £50,270 upper earnings limit, so her next pound is charged the main 8.00% rate.
Ben earns £60,000 — above the upper earnings limit. His own National Insurance is £3,210.60, his employer pays £8,250.00, and the job costs £68,250.00. His next pound is charged 2.00%, not 8.00%, because he is past the limit.
| Figure | Aisha, £30,000 | Ben, £60,000 |
|---|---|---|
| National Insurance you pay | £1,394.40 | £3,210.60 |
| National Insurance your employer pays | £3,750.00 | £8,250.00 |
| Total cost of the employment | £33,750.00 | £68,250.00 |
| Your National Insurance on a £5,000 rise | £400.00 | £100.00 |
| Your employer’s National Insurance on the same rise | £750.00 | £750.00 |
Read the last two rows together. Aisha pays £400.00 of National Insurance on her rise and Ben pays £100.00 on his, because his pay is past the upper earnings limit and hers is not. Their employer pays £750.00 either way, because the employer charge has no upper limit and one flat rate. Nothing about the two arrangements differs; only where each of them sits on the same scale does.
Neither figure includes any income tax, which is charged on a different amount and for Aisha’s rise is much the larger deduction of the two. Neither includes a student loan repayment or a pension contribution. This page prices National Insurance and nothing else.
Methodology and sources
The calculation, in order
- Start from gross pay, or from trading profit if you are self-employed. Not pay after the personal allowance — National Insurance has thresholds of its own and the personal allowance is not one of them.
- Employee Class 1: 8.00% on pay between £12,570 and £50,270, then 2.00% — a lower rate — on everything above that.
- Employer Class 1: 15.00% on all pay above £5,000, with no upper limit. This is a cost the employer pays on top of the salary. It is not deducted from the employee and it is not on their payslip.
- Class 4, for the self-employed: 6.00% on profits between £12,570 and £50,270, then 2.00% above. Same shape as employee Class 1, different rates.
- Class 2 is no longer a compulsory charge. At or above £7,105 of profit the qualifying year is credited with nothing to pay; below it, contributions may be made voluntarily at £3.65 a week — £189.80 for 52 weeks.
- The rate on the next £1 is measured, by asking each engine what one more pound costs rather than comparing pay to a threshold. At exactly a threshold the two methods disagree, and the measured one is right.
National Insurance is not devolved. Every figure on this page is set at Westminster and applies identically in Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland. A Scottish taxpayer’s income tax differs; their National Insurance does not, to the penny. That is a common enough misconception to be worth stating twice.
Rates and thresholds
| Figure | 2025/26 | 2026/27 |
|---|---|---|
| Employee Class 1 — primary threshold | £12,570 | £12,570 |
| Employee Class 1 — upper earnings limit | £50,270 | £50,270 |
| Employee Class 1 — main rate / rate above the upper limit | 8.00% / 2.00% | 8.00% / 2.00% |
| Employer Class 1 — secondary threshold | £5,000 | £5,000 |
| Employer Class 1 — rate, with no upper limit | 15.00% | 15.00% |
| Class 2 — small profits threshold | £6,845 | £7,105 |
| Class 2 — voluntary rate a week | £3.50 | £3.65 |
| Class 4 — lower and upper profits limits | £12,570 to £50,270 | £12,570 to £50,270 |
| Class 4 — main rate / rate above the upper limit | 6.00% / 2.00% | 6.00% / 2.00% |
Those are HMRC’s published annual thresholds and not the weekly ones multiplied by 52. The same gov.uk table states both and they disagree: the published weekly primary threshold multiplied by 52 is not the published annual one, and it is the annual figure that governs an annual calculation. packages/tax-core/VERIFICATION.md records the trap, and notes that the one threshold which does multiply out cleanly is the lower earnings limit, which this software does not use.
What this page does not model
- Income tax, deliberately. This is a National Insurance page. Income tax is on the take-home pay and self-employed calculators.
- Category letters other than the ordinary one, and therefore none of the reliefs that reduce or remove the employer charge — under 21, apprentices under 25, veterans, freeports and investment zones. The Employment Allowance is not modelled either. All of them make the employer figure shown here too high.
- Age. Employee Class 1 is not charged below 16 or above State Pension age, while the employer charge continues throughout. There is no age input.
- More than one employment, the annual maximum for somebody with several, and the interaction between Class 1 and Class 4 in the same year.
- Pay periods. Only a company director is genuinely charged on an annual earnings period, and that case is modelled. Everybody else is charged per pay period against HMRC’s weekly or monthly thresholds, which this software does not carry — they are separately published figures, not the annual ones divided by 12.
- Class 1A and Class 1B on benefits in kind, Class 3 voluntary contributions, and the lower earnings limit that governs whether a year qualifies for the State Pension.
Where the figures come from
- gov.uk — National Insurance: how much you pay
- gov.uk — National Insurance rates and categories
- gov.uk — Rates and thresholds for employers
- gov.uk — Self-employed National Insurance rates
- gov.uk — CA44: National Insurance for company directors
- gov.uk — Changes to salary sacrifice for pensions from April 2029
The rates and thresholds in the table above were verified against gov.uk on 12 August 2026. That check covers the published figures this page computes with. It does not verify any result the page produces, and it has not yet been signed off by a person — the verification recorded in the source repository is an automated one. Check anything that matters against gov.uk or with an accountant.
Every calculation runs in your browser. There is no application server and no database, so nothing you type is transmitted or stored. A share link is the exception: it carries your figures in the URL. More on what that means. Information, not advice.
Frequently asked questions
- How much National Insurance do I pay?
Employee Class 1 is charged on your gross pay: 8.00% of pay between £12,570 and £50,270 a year, and 2.00% of everything above that. On £60,000 a year in 2026/27 that is £3,210.60. It is charged on your whole pay, not on pay after the personal allowance, so nothing that changes your tax code or your allowance changes it. Change the figure in the calculator above for your own pay.
- Does my employer pay National Insurance on my wages too?
Yes, and it is usually the larger of the two charges. Employer Class 1 — the secondary contribution — is 15.00% of all pay above £5,000 a year, with no upper limit at all. On £60,000 that is £8,250.00, against the £3,210.60 the employee pays. Almost no calculator shows it, which is why most people have no idea the job costs their employer £68,250.00 rather than £60,000.00.
- Is employer National Insurance taken out of my pay?
No. Employer National Insurance is a charge on the employer, paid on top of your salary. It never appears on your payslip, it is not deducted from your wages, and it does not reduce your take-home pay by a penny. Your own contribution is called primary Class 1 and theirs is called secondary Class 1; they are two separate charges on the same pay rather than two halves of one. Many economists argue that over time the cost of the employer charge is passed into wages, so pay might be higher without it — that is a contested claim about how pay is set, not a rule of the tax system, and it does not make the charge a deduction from anybody.
- Why does my National Insurance rate go down when I earn more?
Because of the upper earnings limit. Employee Class 1 runs at 8.00% up to £50,270 a year and then falls to 2.00% on everything above it — one of very few rates in the UK system that moves down as income rises. So a pay rise costs you less National Insurance per pound the better paid you already are. Nothing equivalent happens to your employer: their charge is a single 15.00% with no upper limit, so on £60,000 the next pound of pay costs you 2.00% and costs them 15.00%.
- Do you pay different National Insurance in Scotland?
No. National Insurance is reserved to the UK Parliament and is not devolved to Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland. The primary threshold, the upper earnings limit, the employer threshold and every rate are identical everywhere in the UK, so two employees on the same salary in Glasgow and in Cardiff pay National Insurance to the penny. Income tax on earnings is devolved to Scotland and does differ — which is what makes this a common and understandable mix-up — but it changes nothing on this page.
- Do you pay National Insurance on dividends, savings interest, rent or a pension?
No, none of them. National Insurance is a charge on work: earnings from employment and profits from self-employment. Dividends, savings interest, rental income from property and money drawn from a pension all fall outside it entirely, however much of them you have. Income tax may well be due on all four, and the rates for it differ by income type — but no National Insurance is charged on any of them at any rate. That is why a company director paying themselves in dividends rather than salary changes their National Insurance and not just their income tax.
- How is National Insurance different for company directors?
A director pays exactly the same Class 1 as any other employee — the same thresholds and the same rates, and there is no director rate. What differs is the earnings period. A director's contributions are worked out on cumulative earnings for the whole tax year against the annual thresholds, while everybody else's are worked out on each pay period separately. On level pay over a full year the annual total is the same either way, but the deduction lands differently: on £60,000 paid in twelve equal months, a director has nothing deducted at all for the first 2 months and then the main rate until cumulative pay passes the upper earnings limit. Where it really matters is a part year or an uneven one, because a bonus month does not stand alone for a director the way it does for everybody else.
- What National Insurance do the self-employed pay?
Class 4 on profits, and Class 2 in name only. Class 4 is 6.00% of profits between £12,570 and £50,270, then 2.00% above that — the same falling shape as employee Class 1, at lower rates. Class 2 stopped being a compulsory charge: at or above £7,105 of profit you are credited with a qualifying year and pay nothing, and below it you may contribute voluntarily at £3.65 a week to protect your State Pension record. On £60,000 of profit the total is £2,456.60. There is no employer charge on a sole trader's profit at all.
- Is National Insurance charged on my whole salary?
Yes — on the whole of it above the primary threshold, and the personal allowance has nothing to do with it. Income tax is charged on pay after the personal allowance; National Insurance is charged on gross pay from its own threshold. For 2026/27 the two happen to begin at the same £12,570, which makes them look like one threshold. They are two, they have moved independently before, and none of the things that change a personal allowance — a tax code carrying a benefit in kind, the taper above £100,000, a marriage allowance transfer — change National Insurance at all.
- Does salary sacrifice reduce National Insurance?
Today, yes: a salary sacrifice genuinely reduces your gross pay, and both Class 1 charges are worked out on gross pay, so both the employee and the employer contribution fall. That is not permanent. From April 2029 only the first £2,000 a year of employee pension contributions made through salary sacrifice will keep its National Insurance exemption; above that, employer and employee National Insurance will apply as though the money had been paid as salary, while income tax relief is unaffected. Every tax year this calculator offers is before that change, so nothing it shows reflects it.