# Actual Salary

> Actual Salary is a free, advert-free UK take-home pay calculator for the 2026/27 tax year. It provides human-readable calculations, source-backed guidance, a public JSON API and a read-only MCP tool, all powered by the same tax engine.

Calculations estimate employment income only. Monthly figures are annual estimates divided by 12 and can differ from payroll rounding. The default calculation uses tax code 1257L, England/Wales/Northern Ireland rates, a 5% employee salary-sacrifice pension on full gross salary and no student loan. Scotland, supported tax codes, pension methods, student loans, annual bonus and other salary sacrifice can be supplied explicitly.

For a direct calculation, prefer the API or MCP tool rather than extracting figures from rendered HTML. Both interfaces are public, read-only and require no account or API key. Actual Salary does not deliberately store values supplied to either interface.

## Calculator and methodology

- [Salary calculator](https://actualsalary.co.uk/): Interactive calculator with shareable, server-rendered salary states.
- [Calculation methodology](https://actualsalary.co.uk/how-it-works/): Scope, assumptions, calculation approach and primary GOV.UK sources.
- [Salary examples](https://actualsalary.co.uk/salary/): Index of curated salary-after-tax pages generated from the shared calculation engine.
- [Privacy](https://actualsalary.co.uk/privacy/): How calculator, API and MCP inputs are handled.

## Machine interfaces

- [API documentation](https://actualsalary.co.uk/api/): Human-readable guide to the public take-home pay API and MCP tool.
- [OpenAPI contract](https://actualsalary.co.uk/api/openapi.json): OpenAPI 3.1 definition for the versioned JSON API.
- [Take-home pay API example](https://actualsalary.co.uk/api/v1/take-home/?salary=35000): Example JSON calculation for a £35,000 annual salary.
- [MCP endpoint](https://actualsalary.co.uk/mcp/): Streamable HTTP endpoint exposing the read-only `calculate_take_home_pay` tool.

## Guides

- [Guide index](https://actualsalary.co.uk/guides/): All source-backed tax and pay guides.
- [Income Tax](https://actualsalary.co.uk/guides/income-tax/): UK Income Tax bands and Personal Allowance.
- [Tax codes](https://actualsalary.co.uk/guides/tax-codes/): Finding and interpreting a PAYE tax code.
- [National Insurance](https://actualsalary.co.uk/guides/national-insurance/): Employee National Insurance thresholds and rates.
- [Salary sacrifice](https://actualsalary.co.uk/guides/salary-sacrifice/): Workplace pension and salary-sacrifice treatment.
- [Student loans](https://actualsalary.co.uk/guides/student-loans/): Repayment plans and payroll deductions.
- [Part-time pay](https://actualsalary.co.uk/guides/part-time-pay/): FTE, pro-rata salary and paid weeks.
- [Personal Allowance taper](https://actualsalary.co.uk/guides/personal-allowance-taper/): Income Tax treatment above £100,000.