Employer NI & Hire Cost - UK 2026/27 by ReadyStack

Type the salary you are about to offer and see what it actually costs you a year, a month and an hour on the rates in force from 6 April 2026: 15% employer NI above a £5,000 threshold, the £10,500 Employment Allowance as a pot that runs out, and pension on the qualifying earnings band.

1. Unzip this folder somewhere permanent.
2. Open chrome://extensions and turn on Developer mode (top right).
3. Click Load unpacked and pick the unzipped folder.
4. Pin the icon and click it.

Works in Chrome, Edge, Brave and any Chromium browser (Manifest V3).

• 2026/27 rates, not last year's — Employer NI is 15% on everything above a £5,000 secondary threshold from 6 April 2026. The figures most people and most chatbots still quote - 13.8% above £9,100 - understate a £32,000 hire by £890 a year.
• Employment Allowance is a pot, not a discount — The £10,500 is per business per tax year, not per employee. Type in what you have left and only that much is applied to this hire, so a second or third hire stops looking cheaper than it is.
• Pension on qualifying earnings, not the whole salary — The 3% employer minimum is charged on earnings between £6,240 and £50,270. Charging it on the full salary overstates a £30,000 hire by £187 a year, and the same error the other way understates a part-timer.
• Under-21s, apprentices and veterans are 0% to £50,270 — Pick the category and the threshold moves from £5,000 to £50,270. A 20-year-old on £24,000 costs £0 in employer NI, not £2,850 - the single biggest swing in this calculation.
• Cost per hour, and a National Living Wage check — Divides the fully loaded cost by your contracted hours so you can compare a hire against a day rate, and flags the salary if it falls under the £12.71 National Living Wage that applies from April 2026.

| You type | |
|---|---|
| Gross salary you are offering | default 32000 |
| Employee category | default standard |
| Employment Allowance you have left this tax year | default 0 |
| Employer pension contribution | default 3 |
| Pension charged on | default qualifying |
| Annual pay bill over £3m (Apprenticeship Levy applies) | default False |
| Other yearly costs: laptop, software, insurance, desk | default 1500 |
| Contracted hours | default 37.5 |

| It answers | |
|---|---|
| Total cost to employ | £ / year |
| Cost per month | £ |
| On-cost on top of the salary | % |
| True cost per hour worked | £ |
| Employer NI before Employment Allowance | £ / year |
| Employment Allowance this hire uses up | £ |
| Employer NI you actually pay | £ / year |
| Employer pension | £ / year |
| Apprenticeship Levy | £ / year |
| Checks | |

Permissions requested: storage, downloads


Free: the calculation in the popup, no key, no limit. Full version ($60): download the result as .csv - one licence key per person or team seat. Get it: https://buy.polar.sh/polar_cl_GfFrPVXpRpmR3w3163VT9zsBElPZr6m5ZBXOW4CujBF