Student Loan Repayment Calculator
This calculator gives a quick, single-year snapshot of your student loan repayment — how much comes out of your salary this year, how that compares with the interest accruing on your balance, and how many years remain before any unpaid balance is written off. This kind of quick check is genuinely useful whenever your circumstances change: a pay rise, a new job offer, or simply confirming your payslip deduction matches what it should be for your specific plan and salary.
Student Loan Repayment Calculator
Calculate your monthly student loan repayments based on your salary for 2026/27.
The 6% Rate Most People Don’t Realise Applies
Postgraduate Loans are repaid at 6% of income above the threshold, not the 9% that applies to Plan 1, 2, 4 and 5 — a genuinely distinct, lower rate specific to postgraduate borrowing. Anyone repaying both an undergraduate plan and a Postgraduate Loan simultaneously is repaying at both rates at once, on their respective thresholds, which combined can add up to a considerably larger total deduction than either loan alone would suggest, even though the postgraduate portion individually uses the lower rate.
This is worth confirming directly on your own payslip if you hold a Postgraduate Loan, since seeing 6% applied to the postgraduate threshold specifically, alongside 9% applied separately to any undergraduate plan threshold, confirms both are being calculated correctly rather than one rate being mistakenly applied across both.
Why the Interest Rate Gap Between Plans Matters
Plan 1 and Plan 4 charge interest at RPI alone, currently around 4.5%, while Plan 2, Plan 5 and Postgraduate Loans charge RPI plus up to 3%, currently around 7.5% — a meaningful gap that compounds considerably over a long-running balance. On an identical £40,000 balance, Plan 1 or Plan 4 accrues roughly £1,800 a year in interest, while Plan 2, Plan 5 or a Postgraduate Loan on the same balance accrues roughly £3,000 — £1,200 more every single year, purely from the interest rate difference between plan groups.
This gap is precisely why two people with an identical balance and repayment can see genuinely different outcomes over time depending purely on which plan they hold — the lower-interest plans have a real, structural advantage in how quickly a balance can realistically be cleared, independent of income or repayment amount.
When Repayments Don’t Even Cover the Interest
This calculator flags directly when your annual repayment is genuinely less than the interest accruing on your balance, since in this situation your balance is not shrinking despite money coming out of your salary every month — it is growing instead. This is not unusual, particularly on a lower salary relative to your specific threshold, and it is not a sign of a problem with your repayments; it typically corrects itself as salary rises over a career, but it is worth understanding clearly rather than assuming any ongoing deduction from your salary is automatically reducing what you owe.
Seeing this flag appear is worth checking again periodically as your income changes, rather than assuming it is a permanent state — a salary rise, a change in plan circumstances, or simply enough years passing can shift the balance from growing to shrinking, even without any change in the underlying repayment mechanism itself.
Why This Calculator Stays Deliberately Simple
This tool intentionally shows a single year at current salary and balance, rather than projecting years or decades forward with assumed salary growth and threshold changes — useful specifically for checking this year’s actual deduction against your payslip, or for a quick “what would my repayment be” check before accepting a new salary. This makes it a genuinely quicker tool for a specific, immediate question than a full multi-year projection would be, without needing to estimate future salary growth or navigate additional inputs simply to answer a straightforward current-year question. For the fuller picture — how your specific plan behaves over its full remaining term, including threshold freezes and write-off timing — our Student Loan Plan Checker is the more detailed tool, and our Take-Home Pay Calculator shows this same repayment figure alongside tax and National Insurance for your complete take-home picture.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does this calculator account for bonuses or overtime?
It calculates repayment based on the annual salary figure you enter, so if your real income includes bonuses or variable overtime, using your genuine total annual income for the year gives a more accurate repayment figure than your base salary alone.
Is student loan repayment calculated before or after pension contributions?
Student loan repayment is calculated on gross salary before pension contributions made through salary sacrifice have been deducted, but after standard, non-sacrifice pension contributions in most cases — the exact treatment depends on how your specific pension contribution is structured.
Does self-employment change how student loan repayment works?
Self-employed borrowers repay through Self Assessment rather than payroll deduction, calculated annually on the same threshold and rate basis, so the total owed for the year follows the same underlying calculation even though it is collected differently.
Can I see exactly how much of my balance is interest versus original borrowing?
Your annual statement from the Student Loans Company breaks down how much of your current balance reflects your original borrowing versus accrued interest, which this calculator does not track over time since it works from your current total balance figure alone — for a genuine year-by-year projection of how this split evolves, the fuller plan checker tool is the more appropriate one to use instead.
Does my repayment change automatically if I get a pay rise?
Yes — since repayment is calculated as 9% (or 6% for Postgraduate Loans) of income above your threshold, any salary increase above that threshold automatically increases your repayment amount at your next payroll run, without requiring any separate action from you.
Important Information
This calculator provides an estimate based on current 2026/27 student loan thresholds and rates for general information purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. See our Disclaimer for further information.