Enter your yearly income before tax, how you repay and your plan. The calculator shows what is taken from each payslip, or from your Self Assessment bill, what that comes to over a year, the interest rate your loan is charged now and when it is written off. It uses the thresholds for the tax year from 6 April 2026 to 5 April 2027 and the interest rates in force since 1 September 2026.
Find your plan
Your plan depends on where you applied for student finance and when your course started: Plan 1 for Northern Ireland, and for England and Wales before September 2012; Plan 2 for England from September 2012 to July 2023 and for Wales since September 2012; Plan 4 for Scotland; Plan 5 for England from August 2023. Master’s and Doctoral Loans from England and Wales are repaid as a Postgraduate Loan, on top of any other plan. Your online account shows which plan you are on.
How each repayment is worked out
You repay 9% of your pay over your plan’s threshold, and 6% of your pay over the Postgraduate Loan threshold, whatever you owe. Through payroll, each payday is worked out on its own against the monthly or weekly threshold, and the pence are dropped. Monthly or weekly pay is your yearly income divided by 12 or 52, rounded to the nearest penny. Through Self Assessment, HMRC works it out on the whole year’s income; the calculator gives that figure rounded to the nearest penny.
If you are on two plans
On Plan 1 and Plan 2, for example, you repay 9% of your pay over the lower of the two thresholds, in a single deduction: choose the plan with the lower threshold here and the total is the same. A Postgraduate Loan is repaid at the same time, on top.
Interest and write-off
Interest is added every month, even when your income is below the threshold. Add your balance to see roughly how much interest a year adds and whether your repayments keep up with it. Whatever is left is written off 25, 30 or 40 years after the April you were first due to repay, depending on the plan; the result says which applies.
Pay per period = yearly income ÷ 12 (monthly) or ÷ 52 (weekly), rounded to the nearest penny.
Repayment = 9% × (pay − plan threshold for the period), pence dropped; for a Postgraduate Loan, 6% × (pay − its threshold), pence dropped.
Over a year = repayment per period × 12 or × 52.
Plan 2 interest after your course = RPI + 3% × (income − lower threshold) ÷ (upper threshold − lower threshold), within the cap.
Example: £33,000 a year on Plan 1, paid monthly
Monthly pay is £33,000.00 ÷ 12 = £2,750.00. The Plan 1 monthly threshold is £2,241.66, so 9% of the £508.34 above it is £45.75, and £45.00 is taken each month, £540.00 over the year. On £30,000 a year with Plan 2 and a Postgraduate Loan, £45.00 goes to the Postgraduate Loan and £4.00 to Plan 2, so £49.00 a month, the figure in GOV.UK’s own example.
