Minimum wage checker: are you being underpaid?

Your payslip can show the right hourly rate and still leave you short. Required closing work, training, travel between care visits and uniform costs can push your real pay below the legal minimum.

Check one pay reference period below. Enter gross pay and all the hours that count, including unpaid work. The checker shows your applicable rate, minimum pay due and estimated shortfall. It runs in your browser: your figures are not sent anywhere, stored or tracked.

Rates effective from 1 April 2026: £12.71 an hour at 21 and over, £10.85 at 18 to 20, and £8.00 at 16 to 17 or for qualifying apprentices. The accommodation offset is £11.10 a day, not £10.85. These rates apply UK-wide. You must have reached school-leaving age.

How this works

For hourly work, minimum pay due is all qualifying hours in the pay period × your applicable hourly minimum. We compare that amount with gross pay after excluded payments, reducing deductions and the accommodation adjustment. A positive gap is the estimated shortfall for that period. We use unrounded hours and round the minimum amount up to the next penny. We do not multiply a rounded hourly gap by your hours.

A pay reference period is usually a week, fortnight, four weeks or calendar month. It must not be longer than a calendar month. Enter the actual hours and pay for that period, not a typical week multiplied by four. Higher pay in another period does not automatically cancel this shortfall. Pay earned in one period but paid in the next can need a separate allocation check.

The checker accepts periods starting from 1 April 2026 to 31 March 2027. A new annual rate, a birthday moving you into a higher age band, or the end of apprentice-rate eligibility takes effect from the first pay reference period starting on or after that change. Use your age and apprenticeship status at the start of the period. This is not a historic arrears calculator: earlier periods and uprating old arrears need a separate check.

Apprentices

The £8.00 apprentice rate applies if you are under 19, or aged 19 or over in the first year of a genuine apprenticeship. At 19 or over after completing the first year, your age rate applies. An employer cannot make the lower rate lawful just by calling you an apprentice. Required off-the-job training counts as working time.

Count the hours the rota left out

Include required training, travel between assignments, waiting or on-call time when you must remain available at or near work, and required opening, preparation, handover or closing tasks. Record these even if you were told to clock out first. Enter a total once: 30 minutes is 0.5 hours, not 0.30.

For hourly work, exclude ordinary commuting, genuine rest breaks, and standby at home when you are not working. For a genuine sleep-in with suitable sleeping facilities, only time awake for the purpose of working counts. A waking night is different. Salaried-hours work has separate rules for contractual paid breaks and absences.

If you are paid a salary

A monthly payment is not enough to establish salaried-hours work. This normally requires an annual salary for ascertainable basic annual hours, paid in qualifying regular instalments. Choose the salaried option only if those rules apply. The normal basic hours for each payment are annual basic hours divided by 52 for weekly pay, 26 for fortnightly, 13 for four-weekly or 12 for monthly. They are not necessarily the hours actually worked that month.

We also ask for actual hours and normal-pay contractual absence hours counted earlier in the same calculation year and this period. Once annual basic hours are exceeded, the excess-hours rules add hours to the calculation. In the first excess period, the basic component is apportioned by days using annual hours × days ÷ 365. The extra component includes all counted hours from the start of the day the basic annual hours were exceeded, not just the hours above the annual total. Enter that crossing-day total from your records when requested. In later excess periods, all counted hours are added to the normal basic instalment.

Before excess hours, excluded unpaid or reduced-pay absence reduces basic hours. In the first excess period, only excluded absences before the crossing day reduce the basic component. Later excess periods do not reduce the basic component for absence. Leave corresponding excluded absence pay out of gross pay. Ask payroll or an adviser to check these records. Starting or leaving mid-period, a calculation-year boundary, changes to basic hours, separately paid overtime and mixed types of work need an individual calculation.

Pay and costs that count

Start with gross pay before tax, National Insurance and ordinary pension deductions, but after salary sacrifice. Remove tips, service charges and expense reimbursements included in that gross figure. For overtime or special shifts, remove the premium above the basic rate, not the whole payment. For hourly work, also remove pay for time you did not work: paid holiday, paid sick days and other paid leave are not minimum-wage pay, and those hours are not minimum-wage hours. Then enter reducing job costs, including required uniform or equipment and deductions for the employer’s own benefit. Separate payments you make for required job costs can count too. Do not subtract the same amount twice.

Not every deduction reduces minimum-wage pay. Tax, National Insurance and ordinary pension contributions do not. Deductions for misconduct or events for which you are contractually liable, such as a till shortfall or unreturned equipment, do not reduce minimum-wage pay either, so leave them out of the reducing-costs figure. Whether a deduction is lawful is a separate question. Read our unlawful deductions guide or ask for advice.

Employer accommodation

From 1 April 2026 the offset is £11.10 a day, or £77.70 for seven days. Use the actual number of days accommodation was provided in the period, including non-working days, and its total charge. Charges for utilities, furniture or services that you must pay as a condition of the accommodation count towards that charge. If the charge is above the offset, only the excess reduces pay that counts. A charge at or below the offset changes nothing. Free accommodation adds the statutory offset to pay that counts, not the room’s market rent. Do not also enter the rent in reducing job costs.

For hourly work there is an absence adjustment. If you were absent for a day or more, were still paid for that absence, and the accommodation charge did not increase, the charge counts only in proportion to the hours actually worked. For example a £100 charge in a 40-hour week where you worked 30 hours counts as £60. Enter your normal contracted hours in the form so it can apply this adjustment.

Worked example: unpaid travel between care visits

This is an example, not a worker’s account. A 30-year-old care worker doing hourly work receives £444.85 gross for 35 paid hours. They also spend five unpaid hours travelling between visits. With no other pay adjustments, the minimum for 40 hours is 40 × £12.71 = £508.40. The weekly shortfall is £63.55. Leaving the travel out would hide it.

If the checker shows a shortfall

1. Keep your own records. Save payslips, rotas, receipts and messages about unpaid work somewhere you control. Ask payroll to explain or correct the figures in writing. Do not wait for its reply if a claim deadline is close.
2. Report suspected underpayment to HMRC. Use the pay and work rights complaint route. HMRC investigates minimum-wage underpayment on behalf of the Fair Work Agency. You can ask it not to disclose your name, though your employer might still guess who complained.
3. Get support. Contact Acas on 0300 123 1100, your union, Citizens Advice or a law centre. Our union guide can help you find the right union. If your visa is tied to your employer, seek employment and immigration advice before confronting them.
4. Protect the tribunal deadline separately. In Great Britain, unpaid minimum wages can be claimed as an unlawful deduction. The usual limit is six months less one day where the underpaid payday, or last deduction in a legally linked series, is on or after 1 October 2026. Earlier relevant dates keep three months less one day. Notify Acas for early conciliation within the applicable limit. Early conciliation can change the filing deadline; a grievance or HMRC complaint does not. Use our tribunal deadline calculator and get the dates checked. In Northern Ireland, contact the Labour Relations Agency about its separate rules and early conciliation.

Get advice before choosing a route: starting your own tribunal claim on the same issue can stop HMRC taking your complaint forward. A zero result here does not prove your employer complied with the law. Missing hours, excluded pay, costs or the wrong work type can change it. Your contract may also entitle you to more than the statutory minimum.