NHS Pension Calculator
What comes out of your pay, what your employer adds, and what a year of membership buys you in pension. All three administrators, with the tier set on your actual pay.
This covers the 2015 scheme, for the year you are in. It is not a retirement projection. What it can tell you exactly is what you pay, what goes in on your behalf, and what this year of membership buys. What it deliberately does not do.
Work Out Your Pension
Change anything and the figures update.
Where do you work?
Your band
A year of membership buys
—
of pension a year, for life
What Opting Out Would Cost
This is the decision NHS staff face most often, and the one where the obvious number is the wrong one. The figures below move with the calculator above.
You would gain
—
You would give up, every year you are out
The gain is not the contribution you stop paying. Pension comes off before income tax, so stopping it raises your taxable pay and your tax bill with it. Anyone quoting the contribution as the saving overstates the case for opting out.
Two things in that second column have no cash figure and are left without one: death in service cover and ill-health retirement protection both end when membership ends. We do not put a price on either, because any figure would be invented.
Whether that trade is worth making is not something this site will tell you. People opt out for real reasons — short-term pressure on household finances is the common one, and an annual allowance charge is the other. What the numbers above do is make sure the decision is made against the right figure rather than the headline one.
What a Year of Membership Actually Buys
The NHS 2015 scheme is career average revalued earnings. Each year you build a slice of pension based on that year's pay, and the slices are added together. It is not based on your final salary, and it is not a pot of money with your name on it.
The regulations are specific about the size of the slice:
“The standard earned pension is 1/54th of the member's pensionable earnings for the year.”
NHS Pension Scheme 2015, Schedule 9, paragraph 13(3) · SI 2015/94
So on pensionable pay of £32,073, a year of membership buys £593.94 of pension a year. Not a lump sum of that size: £593.94 every year, from retirement until you die.
That figure is worth sitting with. It cost you £2,662.06 in contributions, while £7,601.30 went into the scheme on your behalf — 2.86 times your own contribution. The pension is the largest part of NHS pay that never appears as cash, which is exactly why it is the part people undervalue.
Then It Grows before You Have Even Retired
Each slice is revalued every year you remain in service. The rate is not fixed and not CPI, although almost everywhere says it is:
“the percentage increase or decrease in prices specified in an order made by the Treasury under section 9(2) of the 2013 Act in relation to the previous scheme year, plus 1.5%”
NHS Pension Scheme 2015, Schedule 9, paragraph 1
The index is set each year by Treasury order rather than being fixed in the regulations. In practice those orders have used CPI, which is why “CPI plus 1.5%” is the shorthand everyone uses — but the shorthand is not what the law says, and in a year where the Treasury specified something else the shorthand would be wrong.
We do not project this forward. The index figure changes every year and is set by Treasury order, so a projection has to assume one. It is an assumption, not a published forward rate.
What You Pay, and Why Part-Time Staff Get This Wrong
Contributions are tiered. The tier is set by your actual pensionable pay — not the whole-time equivalent of your post, and not your band's headline salary.
This changed on 1 October 2022 and is still widely reported wrongly. If you work part time, your tier follows what you are actually paid. A calculator that uses the whole-time equivalent will put you in a higher tier than you belong in and overstate your contribution — by hundreds of pounds a year for some part-time staff.
| Tier | Pensionable Pay | You Pay |
|---|---|---|
| Tier 1 | £0 to £13,259 | 5.2% |
| Tier 2 | £13,260 to £28,854 | 6.5% |
| Tier 3 | £28,855 to £35,155 | 8.3% |
| Tier 4 | £35,156 to £52,778 | 9.8% |
| Tier 5 | £52,779 to £67,668 | 10.7% |
| Tier 6 | £67,669 and above | 12.5% |
A further 23.7% goes into the scheme on your behalf. Of that, 14.38% is remitted by your employer through payroll and the balance is paid centrally. Source: pension-eng_wal.
| Tier | Pensionable Pay | You Pay |
|---|---|---|
| Tier 1 | £0 to £13,330 | 5.7% |
| Tier 2 | £13,331 to £28,987 | 6.4% |
| Tier 3 | £28,988 to £34,302 | 7% |
| Tier 4 | £34,303 to £43,038 | 8.7% |
| Tier 5 | £43,039 to £45,134 | 9.8% |
| Tier 6 | £45,135 to £54,862 | 10.5% |
| Tier 7 | £54,863 to £59,369 | 11.2% |
| Tier 8 | £59,370 to £83,026 | 11.6% |
| Tier 9 | £83,027 and above | 12.7% |
A further 22.5% goes into the scheme on your behalf. Source: SPPA — NHS Circular 2026/03, Employee contribution tier bandings from 1 April 2026 (checked 2026-08-08).
| Tier | Pensionable Pay | You Pay |
|---|---|---|
| Tier 1 | £0 to £13,259 | 5.2% |
| Tier 2 | £13,260 to £28,854 | 6.7% |
| Tier 3 | £28,855 to £35,155 | 8.5% |
| Tier 4 | £35,156 to £52,778 | 10% |
| Tier 5 | £52,779 to £67,668 | 10.9% |
| Tier 6 | £67,669 and above | 12.7% |
A further 23.2% goes into the scheme on your behalf. Source: HSC Pension Service — Membership, Contributions and Pay, rates from 1 April 2026 (checked 2026-08-08).
Note the ranges differ by administrator. Scotland runs nine tiers where England and Wales run six. Any comparison table showing a single set of rates for “the NHS pension” is wrong for a large part of the UK.
When You Can Take It without a Reduction
Your normal pension age is the age you can take your pension in full. It depends on which section you were in, not on which nation you work in — identical across all three administrators, because all three descend from the same 2013 public service pension reforms. What differs between the nations is contribution tiers and employer rates, not the age you can take an unreduced pension.
| Section | Normal Pension Age |
|---|---|
| 1995 section | 60Members with special class status may have the right to retire at 60 or earlier; that status is recorded on your own membership record. |
| 2008 section | 65 |
| 2015 scheme | Your State Pension age, or 65 if that is laterState Pension age is set by the UK government from your date of birth. It is currently rising to 67 between 2026 and 2028, and to 68 between 2044 and 2046, so two people in the same band can have different normal pension ages. |
The 2015 figure is the one that catches people out. It is not a fixed age: it follows your State Pension age, which the government sets from your date of birth. Two nurses on the same band, in the same trust, can have different normal pension ages.
Most people in the scheme today have service in more than one section, so more than one normal pension age. Your own record is the only place that resolves that.
Where These Figures Come From
- NHS Business Services Authority (England and Wales) — published guidance. Read directly from the published page. NHSBSA returns 403 to automated requests, so this was confirmed visually rather than fetched.
- Scottish Public Pensions Agency (Scotland) — published guidance. Fetched and confirmed: 1995 normal pension age 60, 2008 normal pension age 65, 2015 the same as State Pension age.
- HSC Pension Service (Northern Ireland) — published guidance. Supplied by the site owner from the published scheme guide; not independently fetched.
The three administrators describe the same rule slightly differently, and only NHSBSA states the “or 65 if that is later” floor on the 2015 scheme. We have shown the fullest version rather than the one that happens to be easiest to fetch.
What This Calculator Will Not Tell You
Four things people reasonably want from a pension calculator are missing here on purpose. In each case the honest answer is a link to someone who can actually answer it.
Your McCloud Remedy Position
If you were in the scheme between 1 April 2015 and 31 March 2022, that service was rolled back to your legacy scheme and you get a choice at retirement. Your administrator sends you a Remediable Service Statement with your own figures. We will not publish a number that could contradict your official statement.
Early or Late Retirement Factors
The table above gives the age you can take your pension in full. Taking it earlier or later changes the amount by an actuarial factor set by the Government Actuary and revised periodically. We have no current citable source for those factors, so we publish nothing rather than a figure that might be a revision out of date.
Annual Allowance
Whether you face an annual allowance charge turns on your pension input amount — the growth in the value of your pension over the year, which is not your salary and not your contributions. It is genuinely easy to get subtly wrong, and getting it wrong means someone misses a tax charge. Your administrator issues a pension savings statement where this applies.
Commutation, Partial Retirement and Scheme Pays
These are decisions rather than calculations, and people take regulated financial advice on them. Nothing on this site is advice.
For any of the above, go to your scheme administrator. They hold your actual membership record, which no calculator does: NHS Business Services Authority (England & Wales), Scottish Public Pensions Agency, or HSC Pension Service (Northern Ireland).
What We Hold Back, and Why
Early and late retirement factors. These adjust your pension if you take it before or after normal pension age. They are set actuarially and revised, and we have no current citable source, so no figure is published.
That is the standing rule here: every figure links to the document it came from, and a fact we cannot link is a fact we do not state. Normal pension age sat in this section until the published administrator guidance was located — the rule was never in doubt, only our ability to point at where it is written down.
Common Questions
How Much Pension Do I Earn Each Year in the NHS 2015 Scheme?
You build up 1/54th of your pensionable earnings as pension each year. The regulations state: "The standard earned pension is 1/54th of the member's pensionable earnings for the year." On pensionable pay of £32,073, that is £593.94 of annual pension, payable for life once you retire.
Is My NHS Pension Contribution Based on My Full-Time Salary?
No. Since 1 October 2022 the contribution tier is set by your actual pensionable pay, not the whole-time equivalent of your post. If you work part time, your tier is based on what you are actually paid. Several calculators still apply the whole-time equivalent, which puts part-time staff in a higher tier than they belong in.
How Much Does My Employer Pay into My NHS Pension?
In England and Wales 23.7% of pensionable pay goes into the scheme on your behalf. On £32,073 that is £7,601.30 a year, against your own £2,662.06. It is worth being precise about who pays it: your employer remits 14.38% through payroll and the balance is paid centrally, so the full figure is not all a cost to your trust. What reaches the scheme on your behalf is the same either way. Scotland and Northern Ireland set their own rates.
Does Buying Extra Pension Change My Contribution Tier?
No. Added Pension and money-purchase AVCs come off before income tax under the same net pay arrangement as your main contribution, but they do not change your pensionable pay. Your tier is unaffected, and they do not reduce National Insurance either.