UK benefits in 2026/27, worked out for your household

What Universal Credit pays, line by line

Universal Credit is built like a shopping list. The standard allowance comes first: £424.90 a month for a single claimant aged 25 or over, £338.58 under 25, and one allowance for a couple, £666.97 if either of you is 25 or over. Each child adds £303.94 a month, with £47.94 more for an eldest child born before 6 April 2017. A disabled child adds £164.79 or £514.71. Caring for someone on a disability benefit for 35 hours a week adds £209.34. A health condition assessed as limiting work-related activity adds £429.80, or £217.26 for most people whose health claim began on or after 6 April 2026. Working parents can recover 85% of registered childcare up to £1,071.09 a month for one child. Rent comes last, and for private tenants it is capped by the Local Housing Allowance. Add the lines and you have the maximum award; the 2026/27 rates page sets them out with last year’s figures beside them.

From that maximum DWP takes away what you already have. Earnings lose 55p of Universal Credit for every pound, after a work allowance of £427 a month if your award includes housing costs and £710 if it does not; only households with children or an assessed health condition get a work allowance at all. Carer’s Allowance, New Style JSA and ESA, the State Pension and Maternity Allowance come off in full. Savings between £6,000 and £16,000 count as £4.35 of income a month for each £250 or part of it, and above £16,000 there is no award. How earnings reduce Universal Credit works through a full month with real payslips, and the Universal Credit calculator applies all of it at once.

Why your rental area matters as much as your income

Two private tenants with identical pay and rent can get very different Universal Credit, and the reason is postcode. Help with private rent is limited to the Local Housing Allowance of your Broad Rental Market Area, set for the number of bedrooms your household is allowed. For 2026/27 the rates are held at their April 2024 level, so in many areas the gap between rents and the allowance has grown. A single person under 35 without children is usually limited to the shared accommodation rate, the price of a room in a shared house. The LHA rates for all 192 areas of England, Scotland and Wales are on this site, taken from the DWP file published on 8 April 2026, and the Universal Credit calculator uses them when you choose your area. Social tenants are not capped by area but lose 14% of their eligible rent for one spare bedroom and 25% for two or more; the spare room rules explain who counts as needing a room.

Disability, caring and illness

Personal Independence Payment is not means-tested and is paid whether or not you work. It depends on points: eight in a component for the standard rate, twelve for the enhanced rate, scored against the descriptors of the 2013 regulations. The PIP points calculator lists every descriptor with its points, so you can see which activity carries a claim. In 2026/27 the daily living part pays £76.70 or £114.60 a week and the mobility part £30.30 or £80.00. Over State Pension age, new claims go to Attendance Allowance instead, at £76.70 or £114.60, with no mobility part.

A carer who spends 35 hours a week looking after someone on one of these benefits can claim £86.45 a week of Carer’s Allowance, provided earnings stay at or below £204.00 a week after tax, National Insurance, half of pension contributions and some care costs. The limit is a cliff edge: one penny above it and nothing is paid for that week. The Carer’s Allowance calculator applies the deductions GOV.UK allows, and how it interacts with Universal Credit explains why a carer on Universal Credit often ends up only slightly better off.

At State Pension age

Universal Credit stops when both partners reach State Pension age, and the safety net becomes Pension Credit. It tops weekly income up to £238.00 for a single person or £363.25 for a couple, more for a severe disability or a carer, and ignores the first £10,000 of savings. Its real value is what it unlocks: maximum Housing Benefit, Council Tax Reduction, help with NHS costs and Cold Weather Payments. The Pension Credit calculator includes savings credit for people who reached State Pension age before 6 April 2016. Your State Pension age depends on your date of birth and is rising from 66 to 67 between 2026 and 2028; the State Pension amount calculator shows what your qualifying years are worth at £241.30 for a full record.

The Winter Fuel Payment is back for everyone born on or before 27 June 1960: £200 or £300 for winter 2026 to 2027, paid automatically, but recovered by HMRC from anyone whose own income is over £35,000. The Winter Fuel Payment calculator covers the shared-household amounts.

Children and childcare

Child Benefit is £27.05 a week for the eldest child and £17.90 for each other child, for any number of children. Above £60,000 of adjusted net income, the higher earner repays 1% for every £200, and all of it from £80,000: the Child Benefit calculator works out what is left. Working parents in England can combine up to 30 hours of funded childcare for children from nine months old with Tax-Free Childcare, which adds £2 for every £8 paid in, up to £2,000 a year per child. Parents on Universal Credit choose the 85% childcare element instead; the two cannot be held together.

Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland

The big benefits run on the same rates everywhere, but the system around them does not. Scotland has replaced PIP, Attendance Allowance, Disability Living Allowance and Carer’s Allowance with Adult Disability Payment, Pension Age Disability Payment, Child Disability Payment and Carer Support Payment, and adds payments that exist nowhere else. Northern Ireland runs its own Universal Credit through the Department for Communities, pays housing costs straight to landlords and offers Welfare Supplementary Payments to people hit by the benefit cap or the bedroom rules. Benefits in Scotland and benefits in Northern Ireland compare them side by side.

How the figures are checked

Every amount on this site is read in an official source and written once, in a dated file that all pages and calculators read: the DWP table of benefit and pension rates for 2026 to 2027, HMRC’s Child Benefit rates, the Scottish Government’s 2026-27 up-rating report and the GOV.UK and nidirect guides. Formulas follow the regulations themselves: regulation 22 of the Universal Credit Regulations for the taper, Schedule 1 of the PIP Regulations for points, regulation 7 of the State Pension Credit Regulations for savings credit. Automated tests replay the worked examples GOV.UK publishes. The method page lists what each calculator does and does not model.