A good UK salary in 2026 is anything above the median full-time wage of £40,911 (ONS, April 2026). £56,842 puts you in the top 25%, and £82,680 puts you in the top 10%. What counts as good then depends on where you live: £30,000 stretches a long way in Hull and is tight in London.
That's the short answer. The rest of this page breaks it down by region, age and industry, and shows what each salary leaves you after tax. "Good" depends on where you live, what stage of life you're at, and what you compare yourself to. But we can anchor the question in real data. The ONS Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE) is the most reliable picture of what people in the UK actually earn, and the April 2026 results came out this month.
The median full-time salary in the UK is £40,911 (ONS ASHE, April 2026, provisional). Half of full-time employees earn more than this, and half earn less. It's a better measure than the mean, because a handful of very high earners pull the mean upwards.
The mean full-time salary is £52,109, about £11,200 above the median. That gap tells you the income distribution is skewed. Include part-time jobs as well and the median drops to £34,229, which is why you'll see different "average salary" numbers depending on who is counting. Everything on this page uses full-time employees unless it says otherwise.
If you earn £35,000, you're about £5,900 below the full-time median. Take-home on that is £28,720 a year, or £2,393 a month.
This is probably what you really want to know. Here's the breakdown of gross annual pay for full-time employees:
So £50,000 puts you ahead of roughly two-thirds of full-time employees, and £60,000 ahead of about 78%. ONS publishes these points at set steps, so figures between them are estimated by drawing a straight line. The ONS tables stop at the 90th percentile. For the top 5% or top 1% you need HMRC's taxpayer data, and our income percentile calculator uses that to show where any salary ranks, and the UK income percentiles page lists the top 1%, 2%, 3%, 5% and 10% thresholds.
Where you work changes the picture dramatically. These are median full-time salaries by region of workplace:
London's median is £16,672 higher than the North East's. But housing costs eat much of that difference. A one-bed in London averages £1,850 a month in the rent figures we use, against £950 in Manchester. The salary you need to buy a home tells the same story: about £42,000 in Newcastle against £260,000 for the average Kensington and Chelsea home.
Your age matters too. Median full-time pay peaks between 40 and 49:
If you're 26 and earning £34,000, you're level with the median for your age group. Don't compare yourself to a 45-year-old who's had 20 more years of career progression. Context matters.
Some sectors simply pay more than others. The highest-paying industries by median full-time salary:
And the lowest:
A "good" salary in hospitality is very different from a "good" salary in banking. You're competing within your own market. Mining and quarrying has only about 31,000 full-time jobs, so treat that figure as a rough guide.
Raw salary numbers mean nothing without context. What matters is what's left after tax, NI, and essential costs. Let's compare two scenarios.
£40,000 in Manchester:
£55,000 in London:
The person in Manchester earning £15,000 less ends up with £45 a month more after housing. You can check the monthly take-home on each of these yourself: £40,000 after tax and £55,000 after tax. Or put both figures side by side with our salary comparison tool.
Lots of people target £50,000 as a milestone, and there's a reason: it feels like the point where you stop worrying about money month to month. At £50K, your take-home is £3,293 per month. Outside London, that's comfortable even with a mortgage.
But £50K also sits right below the higher-rate tax band. Every pound above £50,270 is taxed at 40% instead of 20%. You also start losing Child Benefit if you have kids (the High Income Child Benefit Charge kicks in at £60,000 and removes the benefit entirely at £80,000). See exactly what lands in your account on our £50,000 after tax page.
People often feel the jump from £35K to £50K is bigger than £50K to £65K. The first moves you from "careful with money" to "comfortable", while the second mostly means slightly nicer things.
If you're in a couple, household income matters more than individual salary for living standards. A household where both people earn £30,000 takes home £50,240 between them after tax and NI. A single person on £60,000 takes home £45,357. The couple comes out £4,883 ahead because they each use a Personal Allowance and a basic-rate band.
Here's a rough rule of thumb based on the data:
But these are just benchmarks. A good salary is ultimately one that covers your costs, lets you save, and doesn't keep you up at night. For some people that's £30K in Hull. For others it's £80K in London. Both can be right.
All pay figures are gross annual earnings for full-time employee jobs in the UK, April 2026 (provisional), from the Office for National Statistics. ASHE covers employees who have been in the same job for at least a year. ONS will publish final 2026 figures in October 2027. Take-home figures use 2026/27 HMRC rates.
Compiled by Salary Checker UK, last updated 28 October 2026. Rents are the one-bed figures used in the table on our salary calculator page (ONS and Rightmove, 2024). This is general information, not financial advice.
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