About Salary Crush

Most UK salary calculators are either outdated, cluttered with ads, or incomplete. They often ignore real-world factors like Plan 2 student loans, postgraduate loans, salary sacrifice, or the 60% effective tax rate that kicks in when earnings approach £100,000.

Salary Crush was built to be the calculator you'd actually want to use — fast, accurate, and honest about what hits your bank account. No registration required, no upsells.

It's particularly useful when comparing job offers, negotiating a pay rise, or deciding whether a salary sacrifice pension arrangement is worth it. The results are broken down by year, month, week and day so you can compare figures however you think about money.

All calculations are performed server-side using SvelteKit. Tax rates and thresholds are stored in a database table keyed by tax year, which means the calculator stays accurate as rates change each April — without requiring a code deployment.

The income tax calculation follows the standard PAYE method: deduct the Personal Allowance (tapered to zero above £125,140), then apply each band rate in sequence. For Scottish users, the five Scottish income tax bands replace the standard UK bands. National Insurance follows the same marginal approach using the Primary Threshold and Upper Earnings Limit.

Pension contributions are applied in the correct order depending on scheme type: salary sacrifice reduces gross pay before all calculations, while relief-at-source contributions are modelled net of basic rate relief. Student loan repayments are calculated after all the above deductions.

Salary Crush aims to be as accurate as possible for standard PAYE employment. The results closely match what you'd see on a payslip for straightforward situations.

The calculator does not currently account for:

• Benefits in kind (e.g. company car, private medical insurance) that affect your tax code
• Non-standard tax codes (anything other than the standard 1257L)
• Self-employment income or dividend income
• Marriage Allowance or Blind Person's Allowance
• Scottish Council Tax Reduction or Welsh Government payments

For anything complex, the results should be treated as a guide rather than definitive figures. For precise calculations involving non-standard situations, consult an accountant or use HMRC's official tax calculator.

Beyond the calculator, Salary Crush includes an anonymous salary benchmarking feature. Registered users can submit their salary, job title, sector, experience band and region. The aggregated data is visualised publicly — showing salary distributions, percentile positions, and how compensation varies by experience level.

All data is anonymised before display. Individual submissions are never shown — results are only published where a sufficient number of data points exist, to prevent identification.