Statutory Sick Pay calculator
Statutory Sick Pay 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.
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, paid by your employer through payroll (taxed like normal pay, though at this level little tax is due) for up to 28 weeks per period of sickness. It starts after three “waiting days”, the first three qualifying days of any absence are unpaid unless your employer is more generous, so a one-week absence often pays less than the weekly rate suggests. 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. If you earn below the lower earnings limit or are self-employed, SSP doesn't apply. 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
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 2026-08-28 against gov.uk/statutory-sick-pay. Related: maternity pay · redundancy pay.