Minimum wage calculator
From 1 April 2026 the UK National Living Wage is £12.71 an hour for workers aged 21 and over, with the National Minimum Wage at £10.85 for 18-20-year-olds and £8.00 for under-18s and first-year apprentices (rates checked 2026-08-28 against gov.uk). At a full-time 37.5-hour week, £12.71 an hour is £24,785 a year before tax on the 2026/27 rates. The rates are a legal floor, not a guideline: an employer paying below the figure for your age band is breaking the law regardless of what any contract says, and HMRC enforces arrears going back six years. This calculator turns your band and hours into weekly, monthly and annual figures after tax, and, the part most tools skip, checks your actual pay against the floor, because underpayment usually hides in deductions and unpaid time rather than the headline rate.
Minimum wage at £12.71/hour × 37.5 hours
£24,784.50 a year
£476.63 a week gross, take-home about £410.85 a week / £1,780.37 a month after tax and NI.
Rates from 1 April 2026 (gov.uk). Take-home assumes England bands, standard 1257L code. Full conversion tools: hourly wage calculator.
Underpayment is more common than people think
The headline rate is only half the law: unpaid trial shifts, time spent opening up or closing down, compulsory training, uniform you must buy, and deductions for till shortages all count against the minimum, if they drag your effective hourly pay below the rate for your age, the employer is in breach even though the payslip shows the right headline rate. Tips and service charges do not count towards minimum wage pay either, the base rate must clear the floor before a penny of tips. HMRC enforces this, recovers arrears going back six years, names offending employers publicly, and complaints can be made anonymously through gov.uk or Acas.
How the minimum wage has risen
The National Living Wage was £11.44 an hour from April 2024, £12.21 from April 2025, and £12.71 from April 2026, an 11% rise over two years, well ahead of inflation, as successive governments push the floor towards two-thirds of median earnings. For a full-time 37.5-hour week that is roughly £2,500 a year more gross in 2026 than in 2024, though tax takes a slice: because the personal allowance has been frozen at £12,570 since 2021, an ever-larger share of each minimum wage rise is taxed at 20% rather than kept whole, a full-time minimum wage worker is now well above the allowance, which was not true a few years ago. The younger age bands have risen even faster in percentage terms as the government narrows the gap between the 18-20 rate and the adult rate. Historic rates for every year and age band are on gov.uk.
Minimum wage vs the real Living Wage
The legal minimum on this page is different from the “real Living Wage”, a voluntary, higher rate set independently by the Living Wage Foundation from the actual cost of living, with a separate, higher London rate reflecting housing costs. Employers choose to accredit and pay it; nobody can be forced to, and it has no legal standing. The naming causes real confusion because the government deliberately called its statutory rate the “National Living Wage” in 2016: if a job advert says “Living Wage employer”, that is the voluntary Foundation scheme, while the enforceable floor is always the National Living Wage or National Minimum Wage rate for your age band shown in the calculator above. For 2026 the Foundation's announced rates are £13.45 across the UK and £14.80 in London, check livingwage.org.uk for the current figures. Everything HMRC enforces, arrears, penalties, naming, applies only to the statutory rates.
Turning 18 or 21 this year?
The higher rate applies from the first pay reference period after your birthday, a 20-year-old on £10.85 moves to £12.71 at 21, an 18% rise your employer must apply without being asked. Apprentices move off the apprentice rate the moment they are 19 or older and past their first year. Both transitions are commonly missed; both are back-payable.
Rates checked 2026-08-28 against gov.uk/national-minimum-wage-rates. Take-home figures use 2026/27 tax bands. Related: hourly wage · pro rata.