UK salary intelligence · ONS data · 2024/25 tax year

What does that actually pay in the UK?

The median UK full-time salary sits at £35,000 — but the spread inside that figure is wide. We break it down role by role and city by city so you see the actual range for 30 jobs across 20 UK cities, plus what the take-home looks like after income tax, NI, student loan and pension.

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Highest-paying jobs in the UK

Ranked by national median gross pay. Figures are full-time annual base salary; bonuses, equity and overtime are excluded — total compensation in some of these roles can be 30–100% higher.

#JobCategoryMedianUpper quartile
1 GP Healthcare £105,000 £135,000
2 Investment Banker Finance £85,000 £140,000
3 Barrister Legal £75,000 £135,000
4 Financial Controller Finance £75,000 £98,000
5 Risk Manager Finance £68,000 £92,000
6 Product Manager Technology £65,000 £88,000
7 DevOps Engineer Technology £58,000 £78,000
8 Solicitor Legal £58,000 £85,000
9 Project Manager Construction £55,000 £75,000
10 Site Manager Construction £55,000 £72,000

Highest-paying UK cities (across all roles)

Ranked by the regional pay multiplier applied to UK national medians. Higher multipliers mean the same job pays more in nominal pounds — though cost of living often eats some or all of the premium. Click into a city to see how its cost-of-living index compares.

#CityRegionPay multiplierCost-of-living index
1 London Greater London 1.28× 143
2 Cambridge East of England 1.15× 115
3 Oxford South East 1.13× 118
4 Reading South East 1.12× 108
5 Edinburgh Scotland 1.08× 92
6 Bristol South West 1.06× 94
7 Brighton South East 1.05× 105
8 Milton Keynes South East 1.05× 95
9 Aberdeen Scotland 1.04× 86
10 Southampton South East 1.04× 91

Where software engineers earn the most in the UK

As an example of how the city × job tables work, here are the 10 best-paying UK cities for software engineers. The same comparison runs on every job hub page.

#CityMedian software engineer salaryvs UK avg
1 London · Greater London £66,560 +28%
2 Cambridge · East of England £59,800 +15%
3 Oxford · South East £58,760 +13%
4 Reading · South East £58,240 +12%
5 Edinburgh · Scotland £56,160 +8%
6 Bristol · South West £55,120 +6%
7 Brighton · South East £54,600 +5%
8 Milton Keynes · South East £54,600 +5%
9 Aberdeen · Scotland £54,080 +4%
10 Southampton · South East £54,080 +4%

How we calculate these figures

Every salary figure starts from the Office for National Statistics Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings — the official UK earnings dataset, drawn from a 1% sample of HMRC PAYE records. We use the full-time employee distribution and publish lower quartile, median and upper quartile figures together so you see the full earnings spread, not a single point estimate.

Regional pay is adjusted using ONS regional median gross pay tables — a separate dataset to ASHE that captures the local wage premium or discount versus the UK average. London sits at roughly 1.28× the UK median; Reading and Cambridge near 1.12–1.15×; Liverpool, Belfast and Newcastle below 0.95×. These are derived multipliers, not direct local samples for every job — the assumption being that a software engineer in Manchester earns Manchester's wage discount applied to the national software engineer median. It's a reasonable first approximation, particularly where local sample sizes are too thin to publish ASHE directly.

Take-home calculations apply 2024/25 thresholds for England, Wales and Northern Ireland: personal allowance £12,570 (tapered above £100,000), basic rate 20% to £50,270, higher rate 40% to £125,140, additional rate 45% above. National Insurance is 8% on £12,570–£50,270 and 2% above. Student loans (plans 1, 2, 4, 5 and postgraduate) and pension contributions are handled in the calculator. Scottish income tax bands differ and are not currently applied.

The site doesn't gate any data behind email signup. We monetise via affiliate links to Reed (job listings) and TopCV (CV review), which never affects which numbers are published. Full methodology page.

Browse all 30 jobs and 20 cities

All 600+ job × city combinations are indexed and crawlable — pick a job to see pay across every UK city, or pick a city to see the full salary table for that location.

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