Free calculator · 2026/27 rates
Employer NI & cost-to-hire calculator
Hiring is rarely as cheap as the offer letter implies. Add a salary in, get the full employer NI at 15%, the Employment Allowance offset of up to £10,500, and the 3% auto-enrolment pension contribution stacked on top, so you can see what an extra head actually costs each month.
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Add each role on your payroll and see the full annual cost: employer NI at 15% above the secondary threshold, the Employment Allowance offset, and the minimum auto-enrolment pension.
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Calculate your employer National Insurance bill
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How this works
Add each role on your payroll with its gross salary. The calculator works out employer NI per employee at 15% above the £5,000 secondary threshold, applies the £10,500 Employment Allowance once across the team if you qualify, and optionally adds the minimum 3% employer pension contribution on qualifying earnings. The total annual employment cost is shown at the top.
The figures are statutory floors. Real all-in cost per hire is typically 10-20% higher once you factor in software, equipment, training, recruitment and any bonus or commission structure.
Worked example: an employee on a £40,000 salary generates employer NI of £5,250 (15% on the £35,000 above the £5,000 secondary threshold) plus minimum auto-enrolment pension of £1,013 (3% on qualifying earnings between £6,240 and £40,000). The total annual employment cost is £46,263, or £3,855 per month. If the employer has at least one other employee and qualifies for the Employment Allowance, up to £10,500 of that £5,250 NI bill can be offset, reducing the NI cost to nil and the monthly employment cost to £3,418.
Note: Example figures displayed
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Budgeting a hiring round?
The calculator gives you a per-role number. The harder question is sequencing: who first, how the cash flow handles it, when the Employment Allowance gets used up, and what the all-in cost looks like layered over a 12-month plan.
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