- Your monthly and annual take-home as a resident doctor or consultant, in any of the four nations. It works out your pay under the contract you are on, whether that is a nodal point with the hours, nights, weekends and on-call on top, or a pay point with the banding supplement your rota attracts, then takes off income tax, National Insurance, pension and any student loan. LTFT and salary sacrifice throughout, and London weighting and flexible pay premia where your contract has them.
- Pay scales: the NHS Employers Pay and Conditions Circular (M&D) 1/2026 R2, effective 1 April 2026, which already includes the accepted DDRB award. Flexible Pay Premia and London weighting come from the same circular. Tax bands and student loan thresholds: GOV.UK and HMRC. Pension tiers: NHSBSA. These are the 2026/27 figures, refreshed each April. A fresh pay award or a contract change is flagged on the page until we update.
- Both are on the results. The monthly figure is your take-home over twelve. The hourly ones divide your gross and your take-home by the hours you actually work in a year, not by a flat 40 a week, so a doctor on a heavy rota often has a higher salary and a lower hourly rate than they expect.
- The calculator uses the agreed 2026/27 pay scales. Most trusts have not put them through payroll yet, so a payslip from this month will look lower. The uplift is expected in September and is backdated to April, so that month you should see the new salary plus a lump sum for the months in between.
- Type what you give up each month for a lease car, cycle to work or a workplace nursery. It comes off your gross first, so tax, National Insurance and student loan are charged on less (GOV.UK), and your pensionable pay falls with it, so you build up slightly less pension (NHSBSA). Car parking comes out after tax instead.
- Between 5.2% and 12.5% of pensionable pay, on a tiered scale set by NHSBSA: the more you earn, the higher the rate, and it applies to your whole pensionable pay rather than only the part above a threshold. Contributions come out before income tax, so the real cost to you is lower than the headline rate. If you are less than full time, your tier is set by what you actually earn rather than the full-time rate for your grade.
- Real payslips depend on your in-year tax code adjustments, exception reports, mid-month start dates, salary sacrifice arrangements, and trust-specific top-ups, none of which the calculator models. Treat it as a planning aid, not a payslip checker. If you want to understand what each line on your payslip actually is, the Payslip Explainer walks through a worked one.
- The Pay Calculator works out what a post should pay you, from your grade, your pattern and your rota's averages. The Interactive Payslip explains what every line on an NHS payslip means, using a worked example you can point at: one gives you a figure, the other teaches you to read the document. Neither reads your own payslip. That is the Personalised Payslip Check.
- Because it is not charged on all of it. Basic pay for the first 40 hours a week counts, plus your on-call supplement and London weighting. Weekend allowance, night enhancement, hours above 40 and locum work do not, which is why the deduction looks smaller than your tier suggests. The BMA lists what counts as pensionable pay.
- England on the 2016 contract, Wales on the 2026 Resident Contract or the 2002 contract, and Scotland and Northern Ireland on the 2002 contract with its banding supplement, each on its own pay scale and, for Scotland, its own income tax bands and pension tiers. Choose the nation above the calculator. Dental contracts and non-training grades are not covered.
- Yes, on their own page. A full-time consultant job plan is ten programmed activities of four hours, and pay runs on thresholds by years completed as a consultant rather than on nodal points. On top of that it prices the on-call availability supplement, which is a percentage of full-time basic set by your category and how often you are on call, and London weighting. Clinical impact awards are a figure you type, because the circular names them without values.
- Because resident doctors there are on the 2002 contract, where pay is a basic salary plus one banding supplement for the whole rota, set by the hours it averages and how antisocially they fall. There are no hourly enhancements, no separate weekend or night allowances, no on-call availability rate and no flexible pay premia: all of it is inside the band. Pick your band and the calculator does the rest.
- Yes to both. Scotland has its own income tax bands on earnings and its own NHS pension scheme with its own contribution tiers, and the calculator uses them when you choose Scotland. Northern Ireland is the other way round: UK income tax bands, but its own HSC Pension Scheme tiers. Wales shares England's on both counts, because England and Wales are one pension scheme.
- Because that is what the Welsh pay circular prints, and what your work schedule and payslip say. The registrar scale is five values covering two years each, and which one you are on is years in the grade, not your ST number: two ST3s can sit on different points. The calculator asks you for the point rather than guessing it from your grade.
- Because that is the most recent circular the Department of Health has issued for it. The others are on their 2026/27 circulars. The date under the nation says when each was last read against its source, so you can always see how current the figures you are looking at are.
- An annual NHS top-up for hard-to-fill specialties: Psychiatry, Emergency Medicine, Histopathology, OMFS dual qualification and post-PhD academia. General practice has one too, renamed the General Practice Registrar Enhancement in the 2026 circular. All are taxable, non-pensionable and pro-rata for LTFT.
- Resident doctors at designated London trusts get a flat £2,162 a year, pro-rata for LTFT. Which trusts count is set out in section 6 of the resident doctors' terms and conditions, not by how central the hospital feels. There is no Inner / Outer / Fringe split for resident doctors: that's the AfC HCAS pattern, not the 2016 contract.
- No. Doctor Devify Ltd is not authorised by the FCA to give financial, tax or pension advice. The calculator is a planning aid. For tailored advice, speak to a chartered accountant or FCA-regulated independent financial adviser.
- Scroll to the bottom of the calculator and tap 'Spot a mistake? Let us know'. Tell us what's currently shown, what it should be, and ideally a source URL.
- Dr Dev Gakhar (Doctor Devify), an NHS resident doctor and content creator.
