Hourly to Salary Calculator

How to Convert an Hourly Rate to an Annual Salary

From 1 April 2025 the National Living Wage (NLW) for workers aged 21 and over rose to £12.21 an hour. Workers aged 18 to 20 are entitled to a National Minimum Wage of £10.00 an hour, and 16 to 17-year-olds and apprentices in their first year are on £7.55. Those are the legal minimums set by HMRC and enforced by HMRC's National Minimum Wage team. The Real Living Wage is a separate, voluntary rate calculated by the Living Wage Foundation: £12.60 an hour across the UK and £13.85 in London for 2024-25. Around 14,000 employers pay it, but no one is forced to.

This calculator is built for people on the receiving end of those wages, not HR departments. Most hourly workers in the UK never see their pay expressed as a salary, which makes it almost impossible to compare a 30-hour retail shift on £11 an hour with a salaried care coordinator role on £24,000. It also makes it hard to spot when an employer is quietly underpaying. If you are 21, on £11.50 an hour, that is below the legal minimum of £12.21 and you are owed back pay.

What the headline rate hides is just as important. A salary of £30,000 normally includes 5.6 weeks of paid holiday baked in. An hourly rate of £14.42 (which multiplies out to roughly the same on paper) often does not — unless your employer rolls 12.07% holiday pay into every payslip, or pays you separately when you take leave. The conversions below show you the gross figure, then walk through what holiday pay, National Insurance, pension auto-enrolment, and IR35 actually do to it.

Steps to Calculate Your Annual Earnings From Hourly Pay

Enter your hourly wage or annual salary, the number of hours you work per week (37.5 for most office roles, 40 for full-time hourly), and the number of weeks you actually get paid for. The calculator returns the equivalent annual gross salary, monthly pay, and weekly pay.

1. Enter your hourly rate (or annual salary, if reversing the calculation).
2. Set hours per week. UK office and admin roles are typically 37.5; warehouse, retail, and hospitality are usually 40; the legal maximum under the Working Time Regulations 1998 is 48 unless you have signed an opt-out.
3. Set weeks per year. Use 52 if you are salaried with paid holiday already included. Use 46–47 if you are hourly with unpaid leave, or strictly seasonal.
4. Click Calculate to see annual gross, monthly, and weekly figures.
5. If you are on irregular or zero-hours work, separately calculate 12.07% of the gross figure as your accrued holiday pay.
6. Cross-check against the National Living Wage floor (£12.21 for age 21+) to make sure you are not being underpaid.

Hourly to Salary Conversion Formula

The formula used: Annual Salary = Hourly Rate × Hours Per Week × Weeks Per Year. Hourly Rate = Annual Salary / (Hours Per Week × Weeks Per Year)

Annual Salary for £10, £15, £20, and £30 Per Hour

An hourly rate of £12.21 (the 2025 National Living Wage) worked 37.5 hours a week for 52 weeks equals an annual gross salary of £23,809.50. That is roughly £1,984 a month gross, before income tax, National Insurance, and pension are deducted.

When to Convert Hourly Pay to a Salary Figure

The most common reason people open this calculator is to compare a salaried offer with an hourly role. A £30,000 office job and a £16/hour warehouse job look similar on paper, but the warehouse role at 40 hours × 52 weeks is £33,280 — already higher — and probably comes with paid overtime that the salary does not. Always convert both to the same unit before deciding.

The second use case is pay negotiation. If you are asking your manager for a rise from £12 to £13 an hour on a 37.5-hour week, that is £1,950 a year extra in gross terms. Framing it that way is often more persuasive than the hourly figure. Conversely, if HR offers a salary band of £28k–£32k, knowing the hourly equivalent (£14.36 to £16.41 on 37.5 hours) lets you benchmark against contractor day rates.

The third use case is the contracting decision — should you go limited? A perm role at £45,000 (£23.08/hour at 37.5 hours) is roughly equivalent to a contract day rate of £235 outside IR35, once you adjust for unbilled days, sick, holiday, employers' NI, and accountancy fees. Below that day rate, contracting almost always pays less than perm. Above it, you start to come out ahead.

Hourly vs Salaried Pay Terms

From Zero-Hours to PAYE: How Your Hourly Rate Translates Into Annual Earnings

Tips for Comparing Hourly and Salaried Job Offers

• The standard contractor benchmark: <strong>day rate × 220 chargeable days × 0.85–0.90</strong>. The factor accounts for unbilled days — holiday, sick, gaps between contracts. £400/day × 220 × 0.875 = £77,000 perm-equivalent; £500/day works out to roughly £96,250.
• For zero-hours and irregular-hours workers, always check whether holiday pay is rolled into your hourly rate or paid separately. The legal calculation is 12.07% of pay in the reference period — if it is missing, you are losing more than a month's wages a year.
• If the salary covers 37.5 hours but you are routinely working 45, you are silently accepting a 20% pay cut in hourly terms. Convert and check.
• When negotiating a rise, present it in annual gross terms (£2,000/year is more concrete than £1/hour) but also flag the impact on overtime, sick pay, and pension contributions.
• If the contractor route tempts you, run two equivalents: outside IR35 (limited company, dividends) and inside IR35 (umbrella company, deemed payment). The same day rate can yield very different take-home figures.

Conversion Mistakes That Inflate or Understate Earnings

• Multiplying by 52 weeks when you actually take five weeks of unpaid leave — the answer overstates your real annual income by roughly 10%.
• Comparing a salaried gross figure to an hourly gross figure without adding back the value of holiday pay, employer pension contributions (typically 3% on qualifying earnings), and sick pay.
• Assuming £11.50 an hour is legal because you remember it being legal last year. From April 2025 the floor for age 21+ is £12.21 — anything below is unlawful.
• Thinking a contractor day rate of £300 is equivalent to a £78,000 perm salary (300 × 260). The realistic equivalent is closer to £57,750 once you knock off unbilled days, employers' NI, and accountancy costs.
• Forgetting that NI has a Primary Threshold (£12,570/year, £242/week) and an Upper Earnings Limit (£50,270/year, £967/week). Above the UEL the rate drops from 8% to 2%, which is why high earners take home proportionally more per extra hour worked.
• Treating the Real Living Wage (£12.60 / £13.85 London) as a legal requirement — it is voluntary, set by the Living Wage Foundation, and only paid by accredited employers.