What your day rate actually pays.
Built for freelancers: annualise your day rate, add any PAYE income from a part-time job, and see what's really left after income tax, Class 4 National Insurance and Self Assessment.
Pension contribution (optional)
Paid from taxed income — HMRC adds 25% basic-rate relief on top, and higher earners get extra relief through Self Assessment.
Student loans (optional)
Other PAYE income (optional)
If you also have an employed job, enter the gross salary here — it uses up your allowance and bands before your profits.
£3,047/month · £9,142/quarter
Payments on account
Class 2 NI is treated as £0 — largely abolished from April 2024.
Payments on account assume a first Self Assessment year (no prior payments on account).
Your money, sliced.
- Take-home
- Income tax
- Class 4 NI
Day rate to annual income
A day rate isn’t a salary. Work out what you’ll realistically bill across the year, then feed it into the calculator above.
Full-time is roughly 220 days after holiday, illness and gaps between contracts.
Put this figure into the calculator above as your freelance income. Charging for 220 days leaves the rest of the year for holiday, admin, sickness and the gaps between contracts — a full-time employee is paid for all of them, so your day rate has to cover them too.
Freelancing alongside a job
Plenty of freelancers also have a part-time or full-time PAYE job. Your salary uses up your personal allowance and lower tax bands first, so your freelance profit is taxed on top — sometimes jumping straight into the 40% band. Open “Other PAYE income” in the calculator and enter your gross salary to see the true tax on your freelance earnings, in the right order.
Questions people ask
Sources
Every rate in this calculator comes from an official gov.uk page: