UK Student Loan Calculator Maintenance Loan Entitlement and Monthly Repayment Forecast

What this calculator does

This tool does two jobs. In the maintenance loan mode, it takes your living arrangement, year of study, and household income, and returns the maintenance loan Student Finance England will pay you for the academic year, split between the guaranteed non-means-tested base amount and the means-tested top-up. In the repayment mode, it takes your student loan plan and your expected gross annual salary and returns the monthly deduction you will see on your payslip, along with an estimate of your take-home pay after income tax, National Insurance, and the student loan repayment.

The point of the tool is not to reproduce a number you could look up on GOV.UK. It is to make the two halves of UK student finance visible at the same time. Most students look at the funding question in one sitting and the repayment question years later, and the two decisions are treated as separate. They are not. A graduate under Plan 5 repaying 9 per cent of everything above twenty-five thousand pounds can face a deduction that grows every year the salary grows, and the total amount paid over a career can end up smaller or larger than the original loan balance depending on where the salary sits. Seeing both halves together is the only way to plan sensibly.

Every calculation runs inside your browser. Nothing is uploaded, nothing is stored, and nothing is tracked. If the AI insight button is pressed, only an anonymous summary of the mode, the living arrangement, the household income band, the loan plan, the annual salary, the monthly deduction, and the computed totals is sent to a small serverless function that runs once and then stops.

How UK student funding is structured

UK student finance consists of three parallel funding streams, and it helps to keep them clearly separated.

The first is the tuition fee loan. It covers the published tuition fee for your course up to the statutory maximum, and it is paid directly to the university on your behalf. It is not means-tested against household income. Every eligible student, regardless of family income, receives the full fee coverage. For the 2024/25 academic year the maximum full-time tuition fee loan in England is £9,250.

The second is the maintenance loan. It is paid directly to the student in three termly instalments and is intended to cover rent, food, transport, books, and general living costs while studying. Unlike the tuition fee loan, the maintenance loan is means-tested against household income, with a guaranteed base that every eligible student receives and a means-tested top-up that varies with household earnings.

The third is a set of non-repayable grants and bursaries, including the Disabled Students' Allowance, the Childcare Grant, the Parents' Learning Allowance, and any bursaries offered directly by the university. These are not loans and do not need to be repaid.

Across all three streams, the graduate finishes with a single combined loan balance that is then repaid through the income-contingent system described later in this guide.

The means-tested maintenance loan

The maintenance loan is the piece of student finance that varies the most between students, and it is the piece that causes the most confusion. Two students on the same course, at the same university, living in the same city, can receive very different amounts, because the maintenance loan depends on the household income they are assessed against.

The system works like this. Each living arrangement has a published maximum maintenance loan for the academic year. Living at home with parents has the lowest maximum because the student is assumed to be supported by the household. Living away from home outside London sits in the middle. Living away from home inside London has the highest maximum because the cost of living in the capital is materially higher.

Each maximum is then split into two parts. The guaranteed base is the amount every eligible student receives regardless of household income. The means-tested top-up is the remainder, and it is the part that tapers down as household income rises. At or below twenty-five thousand pounds of household income, the student receives the full maximum. Above twenty-five thousand pounds, the top-up reduces gradually for every pound of household income, until it reaches zero at a household income of roughly sixty-two thousand three hundred and eleven pounds outside London, and roughly seventy thousand and forty pounds inside London.

The difference between the maximum and what the student actually receives is described as the assessed parental contribution. It is not money that Student Finance pays or collects. It is the government's estimate of what parents can afford to contribute towards their child's living costs, and students whose parents cannot or will not contribute that amount are expected to cover the shortfall through part-time work, savings, or a cheaper living arrangement.

Tuition fee loans and what they cover

The tuition fee loan is the most straightforward part of the system. It covers the full published tuition fee for an eligible full-time course, up to a statutory maximum that is set annually by the government. It is paid directly to the university, and the student never sees the money in their own bank account.

For the 2024/25 academic year, the maximum tuition fee loan for a full-time undergraduate course at a publicly funded English university is £9,250. Private higher education providers can charge lower fees and the loan coverage is capped at the lower figure. Accelerated degree courses and part-time courses have slightly different fee caps.

Because the tuition fee loan is not means-tested, every eligible student receives the full amount regardless of household income. This is a deliberate design choice: the government wants the fee itself to be a non-issue at the moment of enrolment, and the repayment obligation to be dealt with later through the tax system once the graduate is earning enough to pay it.

The four student loan repayment plans

Once a graduate starts earning above the relevant threshold, the loan is repaid through the payroll under one of four plans. The plan that applies depends on when and where the student started their course.

Plan 5 applies to English and Welsh students who started their undergraduate course on or after 1 August 2023. It has a repayment threshold of £25,000 per year, a 9 per cent repayment rate above that threshold, a 40-year write-off period, and interest of RPI only, which means the balance grows with inflation but not above it in real terms.

Plan 2 applies to English and Welsh students who started their undergraduate course between 1 September 2012 and 31 July 2023. It has a repayment threshold of £27,295 per year, the same 9 per cent rate, a 30-year write-off period, and interest of RPI plus up to 3 per cent depending on the borrower's income.

Plan 1 applies to pre-2012 students in England and Wales and to all Northern Ireland students. It has a repayment threshold of £24,990 per year, a 9 per cent rate, a 25-year write-off period, and interest of the lower of RPI or the Bank of England base rate plus one per cent.

Plan 4 applies to Scottish students funded through the Student Awards Agency Scotland. It has a repayment threshold of £31,395 per year, the same 9 per cent rate, and a 30-year write-off period.

The Postgraduate Loan is a separate product that sits alongside whichever undergraduate plan applies. It has a repayment threshold of £21,000 per year, a 6 per cent rate above that threshold, and a 30-year write-off. A graduate with both an undergraduate loan and a postgraduate loan repays both in the same month, with the two deductions calculated independently and added together on the payslip.

How the monthly repayment is calculated

Every UK student loan repayment uses the same underlying formula. The annual amount is a fixed percentage of gross earnings above the plan threshold, and the monthly amount is that annual figure divided by twelve.

If the salary is below the plan threshold, the repayment is zero. There is no penalty for earning below the threshold at any point, and no requirement to make up missed months later. This is what makes the UK system income-contingent rather than debt-based in the usual sense: the obligation only exists in months when the borrower is earning enough to trigger it.

The student loan deduction is calculated on gross pay, before income tax and National Insurance. It does not reduce the amount of income tax or National Insurance that is owed, unlike a salary sacrifice pension contribution. It is deducted through the PAYE system, and it appears on the payslip as a separate line item alongside the tax and NI lines.

A worked repayment example

Take a graduate under Plan 5 earning £35,000 per year. The Plan 5 threshold is £25,000, so the income subject to repayment is £10,000. Nine per cent of £10,000 is £900 per year. Divided by twelve, the monthly deduction is £75.

On a salary of £35,000, the monthly gross pay is £2,916.67. Using the standard 1257L tax code for 2024/25, the monthly income tax comes to approximately £374.00, and the monthly National Insurance contribution at the eight per cent main rate comes to approximately £132.80. After tax, NI, and the £75.00 student loan deduction, the monthly take-home is approximately £2,334.87.

Now consider the same graduate on £50,000. The Plan 5 income subject to repayment is £25,000. Nine per cent of £25,000 is £2,250 per year, or £187.50 per month. The monthly gross pay is £4,166.67, the monthly income tax is approximately £748.50, the monthly NI is approximately £258.17, and the monthly take-home after all deductions is approximately £2,972.50.

Now suppose the same graduate has both a Plan 2 undergraduate loan and a Postgraduate Loan and earns £45,000. The Plan 2 deduction is 9 per cent of £45,000 minus £27,295, which is £1,593.45 per year, or £132.79 per month. The Postgraduate Loan deduction is 6 per cent of £45,000 minus £21,000, which is £1,440 per year, or £120 per month. The combined student loan deduction on the payslip is £252.79 per month. This is the highest combined marginal rate a UK graduate can face on income between twenty-seven thousand and fifty thousand pounds: 15 per cent above the higher of the two thresholds, on top of income tax and National Insurance.

Common misunderstandings

Assuming the student loan affects a credit score. A UK student loan does not appear on a credit report and does not affect a credit score. Mortgage lenders do include the monthly deduction in affordability calculations, because it reduces the net monthly income available to service the mortgage, but the loan itself is not treated as consumer debt.

Assuming the maintenance loan is a fixed amount. The maintenance loan depends on household income and living arrangement. Two students on the same course can receive very different amounts, and the difference is not a mistake in the system.

Assuming higher household income disqualifies a student entirely. At household income above sixty-two thousand three hundred and eleven pounds outside London, the means-tested top-up goes to zero but the guaranteed base maintenance loan remains, alongside the full tuition fee loan. The student is not funded zero.

Assuming the balance must be repaid in full. Most UK graduates do not repay their loan in full before the write-off date. The Plan 5 write-off is forty years after the April when the first repayment became due, and any balance outstanding at that point is cancelled without tax penalty.

Voluntarily overpaying a loan that will be written off. Voluntary overpayments on a loan that is projected to be written off before it clears are effectively a donation to the Treasury. They reduce take-home pay without ever reducing the total amount paid. This is why most financial advisers recommend against voluntary early repayment for standard earners.

Ignoring the overseas notification rule. A graduate who moves abroad must notify the Student Loans Company and complete an Overseas Income Assessment. Failing to do so can result in a fixed-rate repayment schedule that is much higher than the correct one, and the arrears that build up are difficult to unwind once they exist.

Where this calculator stops

This tool produces estimates from the household income, living arrangement, plan type, and salary you enter, using the published 2024/25 SFE rates and the SLC repayment thresholds that were current at the time of writing. It does not know your individual Student Finance assessment, any bursaries or grants you receive, the exact fee your university charges, or the interest rate that will apply to your balance across a multi-decade repayment period.

It also does not provide financial advice. Whether to overpay a student loan, whether to take a particular job that pushes a salary above a threshold, and how to structure a household budget around a student loan deduction are questions for the individual and for a qualified adviser. The tool is a planning aid, and the authoritative sources are the Student Loans Company, Student Finance England, and HM Revenue and Customs.

What the tool does give you is a fast, transparent, private estimate of the two numbers most UK students and graduates actually need: how much maintenance loan will arrive in the first term, and how much will disappear from the payslip in the first graduate job. Those two numbers shape the next decade more than most people realise when they sign the original loan agreement.