Statutory Sick Pay calculator
Statutory Sick Pay (SSP) is £123.25 a week: for most people a fraction of normal pay, which is precisely why the number worth calculating is the shortfall: what a month off sick actually costs you if your employer pays only the legal minimum.
Calculator
Sick pay calculator
Statutory Sick Pay for 4 weeks
£493.00 gross
Your normal pay for the same period is £2,153.85, a shortfall of £1,660.85 if your employer pays only the statutory minimum.
How SSP works
Statutory Sick Pay is £123.25 a week or 80% of your normal weekly earnings, whichever is lower, paid by your employer through payroll and taxed like normal pay, for up to 28 weeks per period of sickness. On £28,000, 80% of your £538.46 weekly pay is more than the flat rate, so you get the full £123.25. It is paid for every full day you would normally have worked: the three unpaid “waiting days” were abolished, and you now qualify after one full working day rather than four. Many contracts pay full or half salary for a period before dropping to SSP; the shortfall above is the number to check your sick-pay clause and any income-protection cover against. Self-employed people cannot claim it, and Employment and Support Allowance is the fallback. Long absences that exhaust the 28 weeks end SSP entirely, £3,451 later.
Compare against your normal take-home on the main calculator.
Before you need this number
How the weekly rate, the three waiting days and the 28-week limit fit together is set out in the sick pay guide.
Find your contract's sick-pay clause, “company sick pay” at full salary for one to six months is common in larger employers and non-existent in small ones. If the clause says SSP-only, the shortfall above is the risk you are self-insuring, and it is the honest way to size income-protection insurance or an emergency fund: the standard advice of three months' outgoings maps to roughly thirteen weeks of the gap shown by this calculator. That is arithmetic, not advice, insurance needs depend on circumstances a calculator cannot see.
Rate checked 2026-08-30 by Hadi against gov.uk/statutory-sick-pay. Related: maternity pay · redundancy pay.
How to use the Statutory Sick Pay calculator
- 1
Enter your normal weekly pay and the dates you were off.
- 2
The tool applies the three waiting days, which are unpaid.
- 3
Read the weekly statutory rate and the total for the period.
- 4
Compare it against your normal pay, which is the gap most people are surprised by.
When should you use the Statutory Sick Pay calculator?
Use it when you are off sick, to see the flat weekly rate and how far it sits below your normal pay.
You are off sick
Statutory pay is a flat weekly rate, far below most salaries.
Your employer offers company sick pay
Occupational schemes pay more, and this shows the floor beneath them.
You were off for a few days
The first three qualifying days are unpaid, so short absences may pay nothing.
You are checking your payslip
Sick pay is taxed through payroll like normal pay.
Where to go next
- Maternity pay calculatorTo the other statutory payment, week by week.Open
- Payslip checkerTo check how the sick period was paid.Open
- Income tax calculatorTo tax still applies to statutory pay.Open
All 51 calculators share one tested engine, so a figure from the sick pay calculator agrees with every other page here. See the full calculator index or the pay and tax guides.