Pension contribution calculator
What a pension contribution puts in and what it costs you after tax relief — with your employer’s share, the annual allowance it is measured against, and the unused allowance you may be able to carry forward.
Calculator
Your full pay before anything is taken off.
Your scheme booklet calls this pensionable pay. Most schemes use the whole salary or something close to it; auto-enrolment minimums are set on qualifying earnings, which is a band of pay rather than the whole of it, so the same percentage on that basis puts in markedly less.
The percentages are applied to £60,000.00, which is your whole salary.
That is £3,000.00 a year, or £250.00 a month, before any relief.
That is £1,800.00 a year. It costs you nothing and it is not relieved to you — but it does count towards the annual allowance, and it counts towards the income measure that reduces the allowance for high earners.
Rental profit, a pension already in payment, self-employed profit, taxable benefits. It changes the rate your relief is given at and both income measures the annual allowance taper is decided on. It is not counted as relevant UK earnings, because most of it is not.
Net pay if it comes off your salary before tax and your payslip shows a lower taxable pay figure. Relief at source if money leaves your bank account and a provider tops it up. It does not change how much relief you get in total, only how it arrives — and under relief at source part of it has to be claimed.
Income tax is devolved, so the relief on the same contribution differs in Scotland. The annual allowance is not devolved and is the same everywhere in the UK.
The annual allowance runs by tax year, and so does the relief.
Taking taxable income from a pot — beyond tax-free cash alone — triggers the money purchase annual allowance, a flat £10,000 a year, and it also stops carry forward applying to money purchase savings. It is not reversible.
Off by default, because this page does not know your history and assuming you contributed nothing would hand you the largest figure available and call it yours. Tick it and enter what actually went in each year — your own contributions and your employer’s, gross.
What goes in, what it costs you, and what you are allowed
£4,800.00 a year into your pension costs you £1,800.00
That is £150.00 a month out of your take-home pay, for £400.00 a month going in. As a share of your salary you are paying 3.00% and 8.00% is arriving.
The gap is tax relief of £1,200.00 plus your employer’s £1,800.00. Neither is a return on anything and neither is guaranteed to be there next year: an employer contribution is a term of your employment, and the relief is a rule that has been changed before.
What goes in, and who pays for it
| Your contribution | £3,000.00 |
|---|---|
| Tax relief on it | £1,200.00 |
| Your employer’s contribution | £1,800.00 |
| Total into the pension | £4,800.00 |
| Out of your own take-home pay | £1,800.00 |
Your employer’s contribution is not relieved to you. It is their cost and their deduction, and none of it moves any of your tax bands — which is why it appears in the total going in and never in the relief line. It does count towards the annual allowance below, and it counts towards the income figure that reduces that allowance for high earners, so it can cost you indirectly even though it costs you nothing directly.
What the percentages were applied to
Your whole salary of £60,000.00. So the 8.00% going in is 8.00% of what you are paid.
| Contribution | This scheme | Statutory minimum |
|---|---|---|
| Yours | £3,000.00 | £2,201.50 |
| Your employer’s | £1,800.00 | £1,320.90 |
| Total | £4,800.00 | £3,522.40 |
The statutory minimum is 8.00% of qualifying earnings, of which at least 3.00% is your employer’s. Those percentages are defined on qualifying earnings, and this scheme is not on that basis — so the column above is a comparison in money and not a compliance test. A scheme using a different definition of pensionable pay is permitted where it is certified as at least equivalent, which is a separate statutory calculation this page does not perform.
The annual allowance, and where your contributions sit against it
| Standard annual allowance | £60,000.00 |
|---|---|
| Your allowance this year | £60,000.00 |
| Carried forward from earlier years | £0.00 |
| Available this year in total | £60,000.00 |
| Going in, from you and your employer | £4,800.00 |
| Above the allowance available | £0.00 |
Your allowance is the standard one. The taper only bites when both income measures are above their limits — threshold income above £200,000 and adjusted income above £260,000 — and yours are £57,000.00 and £61,800.00. Testing adjusted income on its own is the usual error, and it over-taxes people with a generous employer and a modest salary.
Your contributions are inside the allowance available, so no annual allowance charge arises on these figures. The allowance counts your employer’s contributions and any salary sacrifice as well as your own, which is what makes it easy to cross without noticing.
The other limit: how much of your own contribution attracts relief
| Your relevant UK earnings — the salary above | £60,000.00 |
|---|---|
| Most you can get relief on this year | £60,000.00 |
| Your contribution above that limit, getting nothing | £0.00 |
| Relief as a share of your contribution | 40.00% |
Two limits, two completely different consequences. This one caps the relief at the greater of your relevant UK earnings and £3,600.00: go past it and the excess simply gets nothing. The annual allowance above caps how much can be saved with tax privileges at all: go past that one and the contribution is relieved in full and then charged back. Only your own contribution is measured against this limit — your employer’s is not. The pension tax relief calculator takes the relief apart, including the part of it you may have to claim yourself.
What other percentages would cost you
On £60,000 in England or Northern Ireland for 2026/27, with your employer’s 3.00% unchanged. The last column is what leaves your take-home pay each month.
| You pay in | Total into the pension | Relief | Costs you a year | Costs you a month |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3.00% | £3,600.00 | £720.00 | £1,080.00 | £90.00 |
| 5.00% | £4,800.00 | £1,200.00 | £1,800.00 | £150.00 |
| 8.00% | £6,600.00 | £1,920.00 | £2,880.00 | £240.00 |
| 10.00% | £7,800.00 | £2,400.00 | £3,600.00 | £300.00 |
| 15.00% | £10,800.00 | £3,600.00 | £5,400.00 | £450.00 |
| 20.00% | £13,800.00 | £4,346.00 | £7,654.00 | £637.83 |
Read the cost column against the contribution column: they do not move together, and which way they diverge depends on your income. A large contribution on an ordinary higher-rate salary reaches past the higher-rate threshold on the way down, so its last pound is relieved at the basic rate and the cost climbs faster than the contribution does. A contribution made on an income above the point the personal allowance has gone entirely does the opposite — a big enough one reaches back into the range where the allowance is withdrawn and buys some of it back, so the cost climbs slower. Rows marked above the allowance are ones where the total going in exceeds the annual allowance available, and a charge would arise on the excess.
Six things this figure does not know
It does not compute the annual allowance charge, only the excess
Going past the allowance raises a charge on the excess at your own marginal rate, on top of your other income and on a separate part of a tax return. The stacking is not settled by any source this software is built on, so the excess is reported and the charge is not — and the excess is deliberately not multiplied by the marginal rate on screen, because that multiplication would look like an answer.
It works your threshold and adjusted income out from the fields above
Threshold income here is your salary plus other income less your own contribution; adjusted income is your salary plus other income plus your employer’s contribution. Those are the right shapes, and they leave things out: salary sacrifice arranged after 8 July 2015 is added back to threshold income, lump sum death benefits come out of adjusted income, and other reliefs reduce net income. On these figures they come to £57,000.00 and £61,800.00. If you know your own, check them against these.
It treats you as having one pension arrangement
A defined benefit scheme is measured by the increase in the promised pension over the year and not by what was paid in, which this page has no way to work out. Somebody with both a defined benefit and a money purchase arrangement, and who has triggered the money purchase allowance, really has two limits at once — the money purchase one and a separate alternative allowance on the defined benefit accrual. That is not modelled.
It cannot check whether you can carry anything forward
Carry forward needs you to have been a member of a registered pension scheme in each year you carry from, and the figures you enter for those years have to be your total pension input including your employer’s. Neither is checkable here. Unused allowance is also not capacity sitting in an account: it is used oldest first, after the current year, and each year’s share expires three years on.
It does not certify an alternative pensionable-pay basis
The three bases above cover the shapes a scheme usually takes, and the comparison with the statutory minimum is measured on qualifying earnings because that is where the law defines it. What this page cannot do is tell you whether a scheme on a different basis is certified as at least equivalent, which is a separate set of statutory tests and the thing that actually decides compliance. A contribution below the statutory figure shown here is not necessarily unlawful, and this page does not say it is. Salary sacrifice is different again — it reduces your pay itself and saves National Insurance, which nothing here does.
It says nothing about whether the money should go in
Money in a pension is not available until the minimum pension age, most of it is taxable when it comes out, and what else the money could be doing — clearing expensive debt, building the reserve that stops the debt happening — is not a question a tax calculator can answer. This page prices a contribution. It recommends none.
Worked example: three employees, three contribution levels
Putting four times as much in does not attract four times the relief, and on a high salary it can run into a limit the calculator has to warn about rather than price. Three employees, all in England, all in a net pay workplace scheme.
Tom earns £35,000 and pays in 5.00% with 3.00% from his employer, which is the auto-enrolment shape. That is £1,750.00 from him and £1,050.00 from them, so £2,800.00 a year goes in — and it costs him £1,400.00, or £116.67 a month, after relief of £350.00.
Suki earns £60,000 and pays in 20.00%. Her £12,000.00 attracts £4,346.00 of relief — 36.22% of it. A 5.00% contribution on the same salary would attract 40.00%, because all of it comes out of income charged at the higher rate. Her larger contribution is relieved at a lower rate than her smaller one would be — it reaches past the higher-rate threshold on the way down, and the part below it is relieved at the basic rate. Neither of them is anywhere near the annual allowance of £60,000.
Ravi earns £240,000, pays in 10.00% and has an employer paying 15.00%. £60,000.00 goes into his pension, and his annual allowance is not £60,000 — it is £52,000.00, because both of his income measures are above their limits and the taper has taken £8,000.00 away. That leaves £8,000.00 going in above the allowance available to him, and a charge arises on it at his own marginal rate. His relief is unaffected: the contribution is relieved in full and then charged back, which is why the annual allowance is the limit that costs money rather than the one that wastes it.
| Figure | Tom, £35,000 | Suki, £60,000 | Ravi, £240,000 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Their own contribution | £1,750.00 | £12,000.00 | £24,000.00 |
| Employer contribution | £1,050.00 | £1,800.00 | £36,000.00 |
| Total into the pension | £2,800.00 | £13,800.00 | £60,000.00 |
| Annual allowance | £60,000.00 | £60,000.00 | £52,000.00 |
| Above the allowance | £0.00 | £0.00 | £8,000.00 |
| Costs them a year | £1,400.00 | £7,654.00 | £13,200.00 |
Ravi’s employer contribution of £36,000.00 costs him nothing directly and is not relieved to him at all — and it is the single largest reason his allowance has been reduced, because it goes into the adjusted income the taper is measured against. That is the shape worth taking away: the money somebody else pays in can be what takes your allowance away.
Methodology and sources
The calculation, in order
- Turn both percentages into amounts, against the salary you entered. Your contribution and your employer’s are kept separate from here on, because they are relieved differently and only one of them is yours.
- Work out the relief on your own contribution by computing your income tax twice, once with it and once without. Your employer’s contribution is not in that calculation: it is relieved to them and moves none of your bands.
- Work out your threshold income and adjusted income, which are the two measures the annual allowance taper is decided on. It only bites when both are above their limits.
- Work out the annual allowance from those two figures — or the money purchase annual allowance, if you have flexibly accessed a pot, which is a flat cap and not a reduction.
- Add any unused allowance carried forward, if you asked for it, and compare the total going in — yours and your employer’s — with what is available.
The annual allowance is measured against everything going in, not against your own contribution. That is the whole reason this page keeps the two amounts apart and then adds them back together for one comparison and not the other. Relief is about your money; the allowance is about the pension.
Allowances and thresholds
| Figure | 2025/26 | 2026/27 |
|---|---|---|
| Annual allowance | £60,000 | £60,000 |
| Taper starts — threshold income | £200,000 | £200,000 |
| Taper starts — adjusted income | £260,000 | £260,000 |
| Allowance lost per £1 of adjusted income above that | £1 for every £2 | £1 for every £2 |
| Floor the taper stops at | £10,000 | £10,000 |
| Money purchase annual allowance | £10,000 | £10,000 |
| Most a non-earner can get relief on | £3,600 | £3,600 |
| Personal allowance | £12,570 | £12,570 |
| Income tax bands — England, Wales and Northern Ireland | Basic rate 20.00% from £0; Higher rate 40.00% from £37,700; Additional rate 45.00% from £125,140 | Basic rate 20.00% from £0; Higher rate 40.00% from £37,700; Additional rate 45.00% from £125,140 |
| Income tax bands — Scotland | Starter rate 19.00% from £0; Basic rate 20.00% from £2,827; Intermediate rate 21.00% from £14,921; Higher rate 42.00% from £31,092; Advanced rate 45.00% from £62,430; Top rate 48.00% from £125,140 | Starter rate 19.00% from £0; Basic rate 20.00% from £3,967; Intermediate rate 21.00% from £16,956; Higher rate 42.00% from £31,092; Advanced rate 45.00% from £62,430; Top rate 48.00% from £125,140 |
What this page does not model
- The annual allowance charge itself. The excess is reported; the charge on it is a separate calculation stacked on other income, and no source this site is built on settles that stacking cleanly enough to state a figure.
- Defined benefit accrual, which is measured by the increase in the promised pension rather than by contributions, and the separate alternative allowance that applies to it once the money purchase allowance is triggered.
- Salary sacrifice, which reduces pay itself and saves National Insurance — and which is added back into threshold income when it was arranged after 8 July 2015.
- Certification of an alternative pensionable-pay basis. The three bases are supported and the statutory minimum is compared in money, but whether a scheme on a non-statutory basis is certified as at least equivalent is a separate statutory test, and it is the one that decides compliance.
- The lump sum allowance and everything else at the other end: growth, the tax-free share, and the income tax due when the money comes out.
Where the figures come from
- gov.uk — Pension annual allowance
- gov.uk — Tax on your private pension contributions: pension tax relief
- HMRC — Pensions Tax Manual PTM057100, the tapered annual allowance
- gov.uk — Workplace pensions: what you, your employer and the government pay
- gov.uk — Pension schemes rates and allowances
- gov.uk — Income tax rates and allowances: current and past
The allowances 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, including the annual allowance for each of the three earlier years carry forward reaches. 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. The taper limits above are £200,000 and £260,000; 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 should I pay into my pension?
That is a question about your circumstances and this page does not answer it — what it answers is what each level actually costs. On £35,000 a year in England, paying in 5.00% with 3.00% from an employer puts £2,800.00 into the pension and costs £1,400.00, or £116.67 a month. Doubling the employee half to 10.00% puts £4,550.00 in for £2,800.00. The table on the calculator prices six percentages at once, and the point of it is that the cost column does not rise in step with the contribution column.
- What is the pension annual allowance?
The most that can go into your pensions in a tax year with tax relief — £60,000 for most people in 2026/27. It counts everything going in: your contributions, the tax relief on them, your employer’s contributions and any salary sacrifice. Going past it does not remove your relief. The contribution is relieved in full and then an annual allowance charge is raised on the excess at your own marginal rate, which is why it is the limit that costs money rather than the one that merely wastes a contribution.
- How does the tapered annual allowance work?
It reduces the annual allowance for high earners, and it only applies when both of two income measures are above their limits — threshold income above £200,000 and adjusted income above £260,000. Above both, the allowance falls by £1 for every £2 of adjusted income above the second limit, down to a floor of £10,000. Testing adjusted income alone is the usual mistake and it over-taxes someone with a generous employer and a modest salary. On £240,000 with a 15.00% employer contribution, the allowance comes down to £52,000.00.
- Do employer contributions count towards my annual allowance?
Yes, all of them, and that catches people out twice. They count towards the total measured against the allowance, so a generous employer uses up your allowance rather than adding to it. And they count towards adjusted income, which is one of the two measures that decide whether your allowance is tapered at all — so the money somebody else pays in can be the reason your own allowance is smaller. They are not relieved to you: your employer gets the deduction, and none of it moves any of your tax bands, which is why it appears in what goes into the pension on this page and never in the relief.
- What is carry forward, and how much can I carry forward?
Unused annual allowance from the three previous tax years, which can be used once the current year's allowance is exhausted. It is used oldest year first, and each year's unused allowance expires three years after it arose whether or not anyone uses it — so it is not spare capacity sitting in an account. You have to have been a member of a registered pension scheme in a year to carry anything forward from it, and the allowance that applied in that year is the one that counts, which is not always the one that applies now. On this page it is off by default: assuming you contributed nothing in three years would hand almost everybody the largest figure available. Entering £10,000.00 of pension input in each of the three earlier years gives £150,000.00 to carry forward.
- How much can I put in if I do not earn anything?
£3,600 gross a year, which is the basic amount, and it is a limit on relief rather than on contributions. Relief is capped at the greater of your relevant UK earnings and that figure, so somebody with no earnings can still pay in and have the provider add basic-rate relief to it. Note what relevant UK earnings are not: a pension already in payment, the state pension, rental income and taxable benefits are all taxed as income and none of them count. That is a completely separate limit from the annual allowance, which is about how much can be saved with tax privileges at all.
- Does it matter whether my scheme uses net pay or relief at source?
Not for how much relief you get in total — it is the same either way. It matters for how it arrives, and for whether you have to do anything. Under a net pay arrangement the contribution comes out of your salary before tax, so relief lands at your own rate automatically and nothing needs claiming. Under relief at source the provider adds basic-rate relief and anything above that has to be claimed through a tax return or a tax code change, and a great deal of it never is. There is one group for whom the choice affects the amount: someone earning below the personal allowance gets basic-rate relief at source on a contribution out of untaxed income, and gets nothing at all under net pay.
- Are these percentages of my whole salary?
That depends on the basis you choose, and there is now a control for it. By default both percentages are applied to the gross salary you entered, which is what most scheme booklets quote. Choose qualifying earnings instead and they are applied to the auto-enrolment band — the slice of pay between a lower and an upper limit — which is the base the statutory minimum is defined on, and which means the same percentage puts in markedly less. If your scheme uses something else again, such as basic pay excluding bonus, there is a box for the pensionable figure itself. The page then compares what goes in against the statutory minimum in money rather than in percentages, because those percentages are defined on a base your scheme may not use.
- What does the calculator show on the figures it opens with?
On £60,000 a year in England for 2026/27, paying in 5.00% with 3.00% from an employer, £4,800.00 goes into the pension: £3,000.00 from you and £1,800.00 from them. Tax relief of £1,200.00 means it costs you £1,800.00 a year, or £150.00 a month. The annual allowance is £60,000.00 and nothing is above it.