Income Protection Calculator: How Much Cover Do You Need?

The quick way to work out how much income protection you need is a single formula: essential monthly outgoings, minus the sick pay, savings or partner income you can rely on, equals the monthly benefit you should calculate for, subject to a cap of roughly 50 to 70% of your gross income. That capped figure, not your full salary, is what most income protection insurance policies will actually pay out if you can't work through illness or injury.

Getting this number right matters because both ends of the mistake are expensive. Insure too little and a genuine claim leaves you short of your mortgage or rent payment every month. Insure too much and you pay unnecessarily high premiums for cover you can never claim in full, because insurers cap the payout regardless of how much benefit you select. A 35-year-old earning £42,000 a year, for example, with essential outgoings of £1,600 a month and three months of employer sick pay, needs a very different monthly benefit figure to insure than a self-employed 35-year-old earning the same amount with no sick pay at all.

• Essential outgoings: mortgage or rent, utilities, food, childcare, minimum debt repayments and existing insurance premiums, added together as a monthly total.
• Support you already have: the length and value of employer sick pay, any savings you'd genuinely use to cover a shortfall, and a partner's income if it would cover part of the gap.
• The cap: insurers typically cap the payout at 50 to 70% of gross income, so a high outgoings figure doesn't guarantee a matching benefit.

Working out your number follows four steps, and you can do the whole calculation with a bank statement and a calculator app in about ten minutes. Insurers ultimately re-verify your income at application stage, but doing this exercise first means you request a benefit amount that's realistic rather than guessed.

1. Add up your gross annual income from your P60, payslips or, if you're self-employed, your net profit from your last set of accounts.
2. List your essential monthly outgoings, covering only the costs you'd still have to pay if your income stopped tomorrow.
3. Subtract any support you can rely on: employer sick pay for its actual duration, savings you'd use for this specific purpose, and a partner's income if relevant.
4. Check the result against the 50 to 70% income cap most insurers apply, since your final benefit request needs to sit inside that band.

The output is a monthly benefit figure, for example £1,450 a month, that you then take into the quote process. It's an estimate to guide your conversation with an adviser, not a guaranteed payout, since underwriting can still adjust what you're offered based on your health, occupation and existing cover.

An essential outgoing is a cost you would still have to pay even if your income stopped completely tomorrow. Getting this list right is the single biggest factor in getting an accurate number, because overstating it means paying for cover you don't need, and understating it leaves a genuine gap if you ever claim.

• Mortgage or rent: your full monthly payment, since protecting your mortgage payments is usually the main reason people buy cover in the first place.
• Utilities and council tax: gas, electricity, water and council tax, using your actual average rather than a summer low.
• Food and household essentials: a realistic grocery and household budget, not including takeaways or subscriptions.
• Childcare: nursery, after-school club or childminder fees you couldn't cancel at short notice.
• Minimum debt repayments: credit cards, loans and car finance at their minimum contractual payment, not the amount you currently overpay.
• Existing insurance premiums: life insurance, critical illness cover or buildings and contents insurance you'd need to keep running.

Leave out discretionary spending such as holidays, streaming subscriptions, gym memberships and eating out. These are real costs, but including them inflates your benefit request well past what most insurers will agree to pay, since the cap is designed around covering necessities, not maintaining your full lifestyle.

UK insurers don't let you insure 100% of your income, because doing so would remove any financial incentive to return to work once you've recovered. Most providers cap the monthly benefit at 50 to 70% of your gross income, and the overall market convention, reflected in guidance from the Association of British Insurers and the Income Protection Task Force, points to a ceiling of roughly £250,000 a year in total benefit across all your income protection policies combined.

Where you sit within that 50 to 70% band depends on the insurer and how they treat other income you already receive, such as an employer's group income protection scheme or existing personal cover. If you're self-employed, several insurers assess your last two to three years of net profit rather than your gross turnover, which usually produces a lower maximum benefit than a similarly-paid employee would be offered. The table below illustrates a representative 60% cap. Your own insurer may offer anywhere between 50 and 70% depending on your occupation and circumstances.

Numbers make the formula concrete. Here are two realistic examples using similar essential outgoings but very different existing support, which shows why two people on similar salaries can need very different cover.

Employed example

Priya earns £38,000 a year as a marketing manager and has essential monthly outgoings of £1,750, covering her mortgage, utilities, food, childcare and a car finance payment. Her employer provides one month of full sick pay followed by two months at half pay, and she has no other savings she'd want to use for this. Netting off her first month of full sick pay, her income gap runs at £1,750 a month from month two onwards. Checked against a 60% cap on her salary (£1,900 a month), she requests a benefit of £1,750 a month with a one-month deferred period to match her sick pay.

Self-employed example

Tom is a self-employed electrician with net profit of £34,000 a year and the same £1,750 of essential outgoings. He has no employer sick pay to fall back on and only enough savings to cover four weeks without income. His calculator result is the full £1,750 a month from the point his savings run out, checked against a 60% cap on his net profit (£1,700 a month). Because his uncapped need sits slightly above the cap, Tom's realistic request is the lower figure, £1,700 a month, with a four-week deferred period matched to his savings.

From April 2026, Statutory Sick Pay changed in a way that directly affects this calculation. Under the reform, SSP is paid from day one of sickness, with the previous three waiting days abolished, and the rate is the lower of £123.25 a week or 80% of your average weekly earnings. For lower earners, more support now arrives sooner than under the old rules, which can reduce the size of the income gap in the first one to two weeks of a claim.

This matters for your calculator result because the deferred period you choose, typically 4, 8, 13 or 26 weeks, should line up with however long your combination of SSP and any employer sick pay actually lasts. Choosing a shorter deferred period than your sick pay covers means paying a higher premium for an overlap you'll never use. Choosing a longer one than your sick pay covers leaves a gap between when your employer support ends and your policy starts paying, so check your contract's sick pay policy, not just the SSP minimum, before you finalise the deferred period.

If you're self-employed, the calculation above still works, but two of its inputs change completely. You have no Statutory Sick Pay and no employer sick pay to net off, which means your income gap typically starts from the point your savings run out rather than several weeks in. Your benefit is also usually assessed against net profit rather than gross turnover, since that's the figure that reflects what you actually take home after business costs.

Insurers typically want to see two to three years of accounts or tax returns to verify this figure, and if your income has varied significantly year to year, they'll often use an average rather than your best year. For a full breakdown of how self-employed income protection is calculated, including how insurers treat fluctuating profits and what evidence to prepare before you apply, see our dedicated guide.

The same handful of mistakes distort this calculation for most people, and each one pushes your result in a different direction. Checking your numbers against this list before you request a quote takes a few minutes and can save you from years of paying for the wrong amount of cover.

• Forgetting debts and loans: car finance, personal loans and credit card minimums are easy to leave out, but they don't pause just because your income has.
• Overestimating employer sick pay: many people assume full pay lasts six months when their contract actually tapers to half pay after eight or twelve weeks.
• Ignoring a partner's income: if a partner's earnings would genuinely cover part of your outgoings, leaving this out overstates the cover you need.
• Choosing the wrong deferred period: picking a deferred period shorter than your sick pay lasts means paying for cover you'll never use.
• Not accounting for inflation: a fixed benefit agreed today buys less in ten years' time unless you choose an indexed policy that rises with inflation.

This calculation tells you the monthly benefit to ask for, but it can't tell you what an insurer will actually offer once they've assessed your health and occupation. Underwriting happens after you apply, not before, and it can change your outcome in three ways: a standard acceptance at the rate you expected, an acceptance with a premium loading to reflect extra risk, or an acceptance with specific exclusions attached to your policy.

Pre-existing health conditions are the most common reason for a loading or exclusion, and the effect varies enormously depending on the condition, how it's managed and how long ago it was diagnosed. To understand how pre-existing conditions affect income protection cover and pricing before you apply, it's worth reading that guide alongside this calculation so you're not surprised by the underwriting outcome.

Once you have a monthly benefit figure, two questions usually follow: what will this actually cost, and which type of policy fits your situation. Both depend on more than just the benefit amount, so it's worth reading a little further before you request quotes.

Premiums are driven by your age, health, occupation, smoking status and the deferred period you choose, on top of the benefit amount itself. Our guide to what income protection actually costs breaks down realistic premium ranges by age and occupation so you can sense-check any quote you receive against typical market pricing. You'll also need to choose between the main product structures, since types of income protection cover vary in how long they pay out for and whether the definition of incapacity is based on your own occupation or any occupation, both of which affect the premium for the same benefit amount.