An hourly wage becomes a salary by one line of arithmetic: rate × hours a week × 52. On a 37.5-hour week, £15 an hour is £29,250 a year, and after income tax and National Insurance for 2026/27 that keeps £24,579.60, £2,048.30 a month. The calculator this page feeds runs the same statutory rules on any rate you type; the table below shows the common rungs worked out.
From an hourly rate to a yearly salary
Multiply the rate by contracted hours, then by 52: every week of the year counts because paid holiday is part of the contract, not a gap in it. £12 an hour on 37.5 hours is £23,400; £20 an hour is £39,000; £26 an hour is £50,700. If your week is 40 hours, scale up: the same £15 rate becomes £31,200. The number that matters next is not the gross but what survives the deductions.
What each rung takes home in 2026/27
Run through the 2026/27 bands: £12 an hour (£23,400 gross) keeps £20,367.60 a year, an effective deduction rate of 12.96%. £15 an hour keeps £24,579.60. £20 an hour (£39,000) keeps £31,599.60, and £26 an hour (£50,700) keeps £39,963.40: the higher-rate band starts biting above £50,270 of gross pay on the standard allowance, which is why the last rung keeps a smaller share than the first.
Going the other way: salary to an hourly rate
Divide the salary by 52 and then by weekly hours. A £30,000 salary on 37.5 hours is £15.38 an hour before deductions; after them it is £12.88 an hour in your pocket. That after-tax hourly figure is the honest one for comparing a salaried offer against contract or overtime work, because the deductions do not scale evenly: each extra pound is taxed at your marginal rate, not your average one.
Questions people ask about hourly wage calculator
How many hours a year does the calculator assume?
Contracted hours × 52. A 37.5-hour week is 1,950 paid hours a year including holiday; a 40-hour week is 2,080. Change the hours and the annual figure scales in proportion.
Is overtime taxed differently from my hourly wage?
No: it is added to the same pay and taxed at your marginal rate. On £29,250 a year the next pound of overtime is taxed at 28%, so overtime keeps less per hour than your headline rate suggests.
Does the take-home figure include pension or student loan?
The table above is tax and National Insurance only. The calculator linked below takes a pension percentage and a student loan plan and recomputes the net as you type.