Agency Worker Calculator UK

Agency work sits in a strange middle ground of UK employment law. You're paid by one company (the agency), work for another (the hirer), and your rights change partway through an assignment thanks to a 12-week rule most agency workers have never heard of. The result is that agency workers are among the most likely to be underpaid, not usually through malice, but because nobody in the chain has checked the calculation properly.

This calculator works out your take-home pay as an agency or temp worker, and helps you check whether your rate and entitlements stack up.

How agency pay works

Your agency is your employer for pay purposes. It pays you through PAYE, deducting Income Tax and National Insurance using the standard 2026/27 rules: a £12,570 Personal Allowance, 20% basic rate up to £50,270, then 40% and 45% above, with employee NI at 8% between £1,048 and £4,189 a month and 2% beyond. There's nothing special about how agency income is taxed, what's different is everything around it: the rate structure, holiday pay handling, and the 12-week threshold.

The 12-week rule (Agency Workers Regulations)

This is the single most valuable thing to understand as an agency worker. Under the Agency Workers Regulations:

• From day one, you're entitled to the same access to shared facilities (canteen, parking, childcare) and information about job vacancies as the hirer's own staff
• After 12 continuous weeks in the same role with the same hirer, you're entitled to the same basic working and employment conditions as if you'd been recruited directly: the same pay, the same holiday entitlement, the same working hours, rest breaks and night work limits

"Same pay" covers basic pay, overtime rates, shift allowances, unsocial hours premiums and certain bonuses linked to your performance, though not occupational sick pay, pensions beyond auto-enrolment, or redundancy terms.

The 12 weeks accrue per role, per hirer. A break of six weeks or more between assignments generally resets the clock, as does moving to a genuinely different role with the same hirer, and agencies have been known to engineer both. Breaks for sickness (up to 28 weeks), holiday, or jury service pause the clock rather than reset it, and breaks for pregnancy, maternity and other family leave keep it running.

Holiday pay: check how yours is handled

Agency workers are entitled to the full statutory 5.6 weeks of paid holiday. In practice agencies handle it one of two ways:

• Rolled-up — 12.07% added on top of each payslip as a separately itemised line. Lawful for irregular-hours workers since 2024, but it must be itemised, a rate quoted "including holiday pay" with no separate line is a red flag
• Accrued — held by the agency and paid when you take leave or request it. If you're on this model, claim it: unclaimed accrued holiday quietly benefiting the agency is a persistent problem in the sector

After 12 weeks, your holiday entitlement must also match the hirer's own staff, if they get 30 days, so should you, with the excess above 5.6 weeks payable as an allowance if not taken as leave.

Sick pay and statutory entitlements

Since the April 2026 reforms, Statutory Sick Pay is a day-one entitlement with no earnings threshold, which particularly benefits agency workers, who were disproportionately excluded under the old Lower Earnings Limit rule. SSP is paid at £123.25 a week or 80% of your average weekly earnings, whichever is lower. Agency workers with less than three months' continuous engagement have their SSP run to the end of the agreed assignment. Maternity, paternity and other statutory payments are also available if you meet the qualifying conditions, with your agency responsible for paying them.

Umbrella arrangements in agency work

Many agencies route workers through umbrella companies rather than employing them directly. If your payslip comes from a company you've never heard of, and shows deductions for employer NI or a "margin", you're on an umbrella arrangement, which changes the maths considerably. Our umbrella company calculator covers that structure in detail.

Worked example

Leah temps at £13.50 an hour, 37.5 hours a week, paid weekly with rolled-up holiday:

• Basic weekly pay: £506.25
• Rolled-up holiday at 12.07%: £61.10, itemised separately, total gross £567.35
• Income Tax and employee NI reduce that to roughly £480 a week take-home on a standard tax code
• At week 12 in the same role, she discovers directly-hired colleagues doing identical work are on £15 an hour, from that point, she's legally entitled to the same rate

This is general guidance, not legal advice. For disputes about agency pay or equal treatment, contact Acas, tribunal claims generally need to be brought within three months.