£18 an hour is how much a year?
£18 an hour is £35,100 a year at a full-time 37.5-hour week, £2,925.00 a month before tax, and about £2,399.30 a month in your pocket after income tax and National Insurance. These figures use the 2026/27 UK tax year's HMRC rates (checked 28 August 2026), England, Wales and Northern Ireland bands, the standard 1257L tax code, 52 paid weeks (employees are paid for holiday), and no pension or student loan, a different tax code, Scottish bands or a loan plan changes the take-home, and the full hourly calculator handles all of those. The table below shows the same £18 rate across 20, 30, 37.5 and 40-hour weeks, gross and after tax.
How much is £18 an hour annually? At 37.5 hours a week it is £35,100 a year before tax and £28,792 after it. By the shift rather than the week: £18 an hour is £144.00 for an eight-hour day before deductions, £216.00 for a twelve-hour shift, and £72.00 for a half day. Those are gross figures and no single shift is taxed on its own, because PAYE works on the pay in the whole pay period against a slice of your allowance, so the take-home share in the table is what reaches you.
£18/hour by working week
| Hours/week | Annual gross | Monthly gross | Take-home / year | Take-home / month |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20 | £18,720.00 | £1,560.00 | £16,998.00 | £1,416.50 |
| 30 | £28,080.00 | £2,340.00 | £23,737.20 | £1,978.10 |
| 37.5 | £35,100.00 | £2,925.00 | £28,791.60 | £2,399.30 |
| 40 | £37,440.00 | £3,120.00 | £30,476.40 | £2,539.70 |
52 paid weeks (holiday is paid for employees), England bands, standard 1257L code, no pension or student loan. At 37.5 hours you keep 82.0% of gross, each hour is worth £14.76 after tax against the £18 headline.
Where £18 an hour sits in the tax system
£35,100 is near the top of the basic rate and above every student loan threshold, so a borrower on any plan is repaying 9% of the pay above it. Everything above the £12,570 allowance is taxed at 20%, with National Insurance on top, and that stays true until £50,270, £15,170 away. The next thing that changes is the rate itself: £15,170 more and the part above £50,270 is taxed at 40%, while National Insurance falls from 8% to 2% at the same point. The next threshold is where higher-rate tax starts, at £50,270: £15,170 away.
In hourly terms, that next threshold is £7.78 an hour away at 37.5 hours: a rise to £25.78 an hour is where higher-rate tax starts.
At 37.5 hours, £18 an hour is £1,305 above the Plan 4 (Scotland) student loan threshold, so a borrower on that plan repays £117.45 a year from it.
After tax, an hour at £18 is worth £14.76, so clearing £1,000 takes 68 hours of work. The annual supports rent of about £1,170 a month on a letting agent's 30× gross test, against £720 at 30% of take-home, the figure a budget can live on; the rent affordability calculator shows both.
What is an extra hour worth at £18?
Overtime is not taxed at a special rate: an extra hour is ordinary pay stacked on top of what you already earn, so it is taxed at your marginal rate. At £35,100 that rate is 28%, so a plain extra hour at £18 leaves £12.96, and an hour paid at time-and-a-half leaves £19.44. Work it out for your own hours on the overtime calculator.
How £18 compares with the legal minimum
£18 is £5.29 an hour above the £12.71 National Living Wage for workers aged 21 and over. Over a 37.5-hour week that is £198.37 a week more, or £10,315 a year before tax. Check your own age band on the minimum wage calculator, which also tests your actual weekly pay against the rate you are owed.
Questions people ask about £18 an hour
What tax band is £35,100 in?
The basic rate. Income above £12,570 is taxed at 20% up to £50,270, and £35,100 is £15,170 below that.
How much can I earn before higher-rate tax?
£15,170 more. Higher-rate tax starts at £50,270 in England, Wales and Northern Ireland for 2026/27.
Is £35,100 above the UK median salary?
Yes. £35,100 out-earns about 61% of UK taxpayers by HMRC's income distribution.
Nearby hourly rates
Any other rate, plus pension and student loan: hourly wage calculator · full deductions on the main calculator.
2026/27 HMRC rates, checked 28 August 2026 by Hadi.