Salary to Hourly Calculator
Convert your annual salary to an equivalent hourly rate, or calculate your annual pay from an hourly wage.
What this calculator does
This calculator converts between an annual salary and an hourly rate in both directions, using the hours and weeks you specify rather than a fixed assumption. That flexibility matters in the UK, where the full-time standard is 37.5 hours a week rather than 40, and using the wrong figure changes the answer by about six percent.
Alongside the gross conversion it estimates take-home after income tax and National Insurance, giving both an after-tax hourly figure and an effective rate, with a period-by-period table showing gross, deductions, and net. The after-tax hourly rate is the honest measure of what an additional hour of work is worth to you.
When to use it
Use it when comparing an hourly or day-rate role against a salaried one, since the two cannot be ranked without a common unit. It is also the right tool for testing whether a salary that looks generous survives contact with the hours it demands, which is a frequent problem in professional roles with no overtime entitlement.
Anyone considering going self-employed should run it in reverse: start from the salary you need to replace, reduce the weeks to those you will actually bill, and see the hourly rate that results. Conversely, if the calculator shows your after-tax hourly rate at work is already above what a side project would pay per hour, the analysis is finished.
Understanding the inputs
The amount field takes either a salary or an hourly rate, depending on which way you are converting. Hours per week should reflect paid hours, so exclude an unpaid lunch break; a nine-to-five with an hour for lunch is 37.5, not 40.
Weeks per year is where most of the error hides. Employees should leave it at 52, because the 5.6 weeks of statutory paid holiday are paid. Self-employed workers should drop it to the weeks they will genuinely invoice, commonly 44 to 47 once holiday, illness, admin, and gaps between contracts are removed. Changing that one field from 52 to 46 raises the required rate by about 13 percent.
A worked example
A 45,000 pound salary at 37.5 hours across 52 weeks is 1,950 hours, giving a gross rate of about 23.08 pounds an hour. After income tax and National Insurance on 2026/27 thresholds, take-home is roughly 35,300 pounds, or about 18.10 pounds an hour after deductions.
Divide the same salary by 40 hours a week instead and the rate drops to 21.63 pounds, which is why the unpaid lunch break matters. Going self-employed and billing 46 weeks at 37.5 hours gives 1,725 hours, so matching 45,000 pounds of gross revenue needs about 26.09 pounds an hour, and that is before replacing the employer pension contribution, sick pay, and equipment, which realistically pushes the parity rate past 32 pounds.
Limitations and assumptions
The gross conversion is exact arithmetic. The tax figures are estimates only, not tax advice, and HMRC is the authority. They assume a standard personal allowance, a single employment under PAYE, and English, Welsh, or Northern Irish rates; Scottish taxpayers face different bands and will see a different net figure.
The comparison ignores everything an employer provides beyond cash: auto-enrolment pension contributions, Statutory Sick Pay, paid holiday, parental leave, notice periods, and employment rights that accrue with service. All of these are worth real money per hour and none appear here, which flatters self-employment in a naive comparison. Student loan repayments, salary sacrifice, and benefits in kind also move the net figure and are not modelled.
Common Questions
- How many hours a year should I divide by?
- The UK full-time norm is 37.5 hours a week rather than 40, since a standard nine-to-five with an unpaid hour for lunch gives 7.5 paid hours a day. Across 52 weeks that is 1,950 hours. Some sectors use 35 or 40, so check your contract before assuming.
- Does statutory holiday change my hourly rate?
- Not for an employee. Workers are entitled to 5.6 weeks of paid annual leave, which for a five-day week is 28 days including bank holidays if the employer counts them within the entitlement. Because that leave is paid, your hourly equivalent is unchanged. For the self-employed, unpaid leave has to be priced into the rate.
- What hourly rate replaces my salary if I go self-employed?
- Divide by billable weeks rather than 52, then add for the costs an employer was covering: pension contributions, employer National Insurance, sick pay, holiday, and equipment. Working 46 weeks instead of 52 alone requires a 13 percent uplift, and a realistic all-in figure is 40 to 60 percent above the naive hourly rate.
- Is my lunch break paid?
- Usually not. Workers over 18 are entitled to an uninterrupted 20-minute rest break when working more than six hours, and most employers give 30 or 60 minutes unpaid. That is why a 9-to-5 job is 37.5 paid hours rather than 40, and why using 40 understates your true hourly rate by about 6 percent.
- How does the National Living Wage affect this?
- It sets a legal floor per hour, not per salary, and it rises each April. The rate applies to workers aged 21 and over, with lower National Minimum Wage rates for younger workers and apprentices. Converting a low salary to hourly using real hours is the check that matters, because unpaid overtime can pull an apparently compliant salary below the floor.
- Am I entitled to extra pay for overtime?
- Only if your contract says so. There is no statutory right to a premium rate for overtime in the UK, unlike the US. The single constraint is that your average pay must not fall below the National Minimum Wage for the hours worked, and the Working Time Regulations cap the average week at 48 hours unless you have opted out.
- How do I compare a part-time role fairly?
- Convert both to an hourly figure, then check pro-rata treatment of holiday, pension, and any bonus, since part-time workers are legally entitled to no less favourable terms. Pension auto-enrolment has an earnings trigger, so a part-time salary below it may mean no employer contribution at all, which is a real hourly cost.
- Why does the take-home hourly rate look low?
- Because income tax and National Insurance together take a meaningful share once you are above the personal allowance, and the marginal bite grows once you cross the higher-rate threshold. Someone on 60,000 pounds keeps only about 58 pence of each additional pound, so their marginal hourly rate is far below their average one.
- Should I use 52 weeks or 52.14?
- Fifty-two is the practical convention and what most payroll systems use for hourly conversion. The extra fraction is why the calendar occasionally produces 53 weekly pay dates in a tax year. For rate comparison purposes the difference is under a quarter of a percent and not worth modelling.
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