Convert a salary to an hourly rate — or an hourly rate to a salary — and check it against the 2026/27 minimum wage. Works for term-time and part-year contracts.
Paid for only part of the year (e.g. school term-time)
per year
Based on 37.5 hours a week over 52 paid weeks — 1,950 hours a year.
£15.38 an hour clears the £12.71 minimum for 21 and over (national living wage).
Hourly rate
£15.38
per hour
Daily rate
£115.38
per day (5-day week)
Time and a half
£23.08
overtime at 1.5×
Double time
£30.77
overtime at 2×
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See how the widget worksYour hourly rate is your gross pay divided by the hours you are actually paid for in a year. The arithmetic is simple, but two things trip people up: how many weeks a year you are paid for, and whether paid holiday is already inside the figure.
Hourly Rate = Annual Salary ÷ (Hours per week × Paid weeks per year)
On a standard full-time contract of 37.5 hours a week, paid across all 52 weeks, that is 1,950 hours a year. A £30,000 salary is therefore £30,000 ÷ 1,950 = £15.38 an hour. At 40 hours a week (2,080 hours) the same salary is worth £14.42 an hour — which is why two jobs advertised at the same salary can pay very differently.
| Annual salary | Hourly rate | Weekly | Monthly |
|---|---|---|---|
| £20,000.00 | £10.26 | £384.62 | £1,666.67 |
| £25,000.00 | £12.82 | £480.77 | £2,083.33 |
| £30,000.00 | £15.38 | £576.92 | £2,500.00 |
| £35,000.00 | £17.95 | £673.08 | £2,916.67 |
| £40,000.00 | £20.51 | £769.23 | £3,333.33 |
| £50,000.00 | £25.64 | £961.54 | £4,166.67 |
Whatever your salary, the hourly rate it produces must clear the National Minimum Wage for your age band. From April 2026 the rates are:
| Age band | Rate per hour | Full-time equivalent (37.5h) |
|---|---|---|
| 21 and over (National Living Wage) | £12.71 | £24,784.50 |
| 18 to 20 | £10.85 | £21,157.50 |
| Under 18 | £8.00 | £15,600.00 |
| Apprentice (first year) | £8.00 | £15,600.00 |
A salary can drift below the minimum without anyone noticing — most often when hours creep up but pay does not, or when unpaid time (handover, compulsory training, opening up) is not counted. HMRC can recover arrears going back up to six years.
If you are only paid for part of the year, dividing by 52 understates your hourly rate. A term-time worker paid £24,000 for 39 weeks at 37.5 hours a week works 1,462.5 hours, so their rate is £16.41 an hour — not the £12.31 that a naive 52-week calculation suggests. Salaries like this are usually paid in 12 equal monthly instalments, which hides the difference. Use the term-time toggle above to get the right figure, and the pro rata calculator to scale a full-time salary down to a part-time pattern.
If you are paid by the hour, your headline rate usually excludes holiday pay: you either accrue 5.6 weeks of paid leave or receive rolled-up holiday pay at 12.07% of the hours you work. A salaried employee's rate already includes it. That is worth remembering when you compare an hourly job with a salaried one — an hourly rate needs to be roughly 12% higher to match.
To see what either figure is worth after deductions, use the take-home pay calculator. If you are the employer, the employee cost calculator adds employer National Insurance and pension to show the real cost of an hourly role.