Income Percentile FAQs
What salary puts you in the top 10%?
Around £62,000 of gross individual income, based on HMRC/ONS distribution estimates. Top 5% starts near £80,000, top 1% near £145,000, and the top 0.1% near £400,000. London and the South East skew several bands higher · a top-10% national income can feel mid-pack in zone 2.
What is the median UK salary?
About £29,000 across all income taxpayers, and around £37,000 for full-time employees. Half the country earns below these numbers · which startles people in professional bubbles where £50,000 reads as ordinary. It is comfortably inside the top third nationally.
Why do I feel poorer than my percentile says?
Three classics: housing costs (a top-20% income renting in London can have less left over than a median earner who owns outright), household maths (one income feeding four people), and reference groups · we benchmark against colleagues and Instagram, not the real distribution. Percentiles correct the reference group; they cannot correct your rent.
Individual or household income?
Individual, gross, before tax. Households are a different table: two median earners make a household comfortably in the top third of households. For salary benchmarking and negotiations, the individual distribution is the honest one · which is what this page uses.
Does wealth matter more than income?
For long-run financial position, usually. Income is the flow; wealth is the stock · and they rank people very differently. Plenty of £80k earners have negative net worth while £30k earners with paid-off houses and old pensions sit in the top quartile. See the Net Worth Percentile calculator for that half of the story.
For informational purposes only · Percentiles are estimates interpolated from HMRC Survey of Personal Incomes and ONS distributions (latest available) · Individual gross income among ~34m UK income taxpayers · Regional and household pictures differ