Convert an annual salary into the hourly rate you actually earn.
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What this calculator covers and how the numbers are worked out
This calculator does the reverse of converting hourly pay to a yearly figure: it takes your annual salary and works out what that equates to as an hourly rate. It's useful for comparing a salaried job against hourly-paid or contract work, or simply for understanding the value of your time.
The formula is your annual salary divided by your total working hours for the year, where total working hours is your weekly hours multiplied by the number of weeks you're paid for. As with the hourly-to-yearly conversion, getting the weeks-paid figure right matters just as much as the salary itself.
Here's a worked example. Say your annual salary is £34,000, you work 37.5 hours a week, and you're paid for all 52 weeks of the year. Your total annual hours are 37.5 × 52 = 1,950 hours, so your hourly rate works out to £34,000 ÷ 1,950 = approximately £17.44 an hour.
The number of paid weeks changes the answer more than people expect. If that same £34,000 salary only covered 46 paid weeks a year, for example because six weeks were genuinely unpaid, your total hours would be 37.5 × 46 = 1,725, giving an hourly rate of £34,000 ÷ 1,725 = approximately £19.71. The fewer weeks your salary is spread across, the higher the equivalent hourly rate turns out to be.
When working out your weekly hours, only count the hours you're actually paid for. Don't include unpaid lunch breaks or other unpaid time, since including them would understate your true hourly rate by spreading your salary across hours you're not actually being compensated for.
It's worth remembering this always produces a gross hourly figure, calculated from your gross annual salary before income tax, National Insurance or any pension contribution. It shows what you're paid per hour worked, not what actually lands in your bank account per hour.
If you want to see what your equivalent take-home pay looks like, rather than just the gross hourly rate, put your annual salary into the Salary Calculator on this site to get an estimate of your net pay after all the standard deductions.
This conversion is also worth revisiting whenever your working pattern changes, for example moving from a five-day week to a four-day week on the same salary, or picking up a second role alongside your main job. Recalculating your effective hourly rate after a change like that can be a useful reality check on whether your pay has genuinely kept pace with the time you're putting in.
Your annual salary is divided by your total paid hours for the year, which is your weekly hours multiplied by the number of weeks you're paid for.
Use your contracted hours for your official hourly rate, or your actual average hours if you want a more realistic sense of what you're being paid per hour worked.
No. Only include hours you're actually paid for; counting unpaid breaks would make your true hourly rate look lower than it really is.
Before tax. It's a gross hourly rate calculated directly from your gross annual salary, with no tax, National Insurance or pension deductions applied.
Enter your actual weekly hours, not a full-time equivalent, along with the number of weeks you're paid for in the year, to get an hourly rate that reflects your real working pattern.
Use the actual number of paid weeks instead of 52, for example 46 or 48 if some weeks are unpaid; using fewer paid weeks results in a higher calculated hourly rate for the same salary.
No, the calculation is based on your contracted hours. If you consistently work unpaid extra hours, your true effective hourly rate would be lower than the figure shown here.
It lets you compare a salaried position directly against a role advertised with an hourly or day rate, by converting both into the same unit so you can see which actually pays more for your time.
Yes, roughly. Divide the day rate by your normal daily hours to get an hourly figure first, then use that alongside this calculator to compare it against a salaried role converted the same way.
Because they're paid for different numbers of weeks or hours a year. Someone on a term-time-only contract or with several unpaid weeks will show a higher effective hourly rate than someone on the same salary paid across all 52 weeks, since the same money is divided across fewer hours.
These results are estimates for general guidance and are not financial advice. Always confirm important figures with an official source.
Rates last reviewed: 2 October 2026 · Built around the 2026/27 UK tax year
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