Who is behind Benefits Calc

Benefits Calc is published by Radif Partners, a company that builds free calculators on top of official rules. This site deals with the benefits people in the United Kingdom claim when money is short or circumstances change: Universal Credit, Pension Credit, Personal Independence Payment, Carer’s Allowance, Child Benefit, the State Pension and the help available with rent and childcare.

Why it exists

Ask GOV.UK how much Universal Credit you could get and it sends you to one of three independent calculators. They are thorough, and they take ten to fifteen screens before showing a figure, then give a total without saying where it came from. Quick calculators elsewhere often skip the two things that move an award most: the Local Housing Allowance of the rental area, which caps help with private rent, and the work allowance, which decides where the 55% taper starts. Some still applied the two-child limit months after it ended on 6 April 2026.

So we built the opposite: a short form, a result at each keystroke, and every line of the award shown, standard allowance, each element, each deduction, the rent your area’s allowance covers and the part it does not. Behind it sit the DWP’s 2026/27 LHA rates for all 192 rental areas of England, Scotland and Wales, and the separate systems of Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Where the figures come from

Only from the bodies that set them: the DWP table of benefit and pension rates for 2026 to 2027, HMRC for Child Benefit and Tax-Free Childcare, Social Security Scotland and the Scottish Government’s up-rating report for Scottish payments, nidirect for Northern Ireland, and legislation.gov.uk for the formulas (the Universal Credit Regulations 2013, the PIP Regulations 2013, the State Pension Credit Act 2002). Each value is written once in a dated parameter file that every page reads. The method page explains each calculation and its limits.

What we are not

We are not the DWP, HMRC, Social Security Scotland or the Department for Communities, and we cannot decide, speed up or challenge a claim. We are not an advice agency either. For a mandatory reconsideration, an appeal or a complicated household, Citizens Advice, Advice NI and council welfare rights teams help for free.

How the site is paid for

It is free and needs no account. If advertising is added later it will never sit above a calculator, and nothing you type can be used for it, because the calculations happen in your browser and are never sent to us.

Tell us when something is wrong

A rate that looks out of date, a result that does not match your statement, a case we miss: write to contact@benefitscalc.co.uk with the page address and, for a calculation, the share link. See the editorial policy for how corrections are handled.

Rates for 2026/27, read on 10 October 2026.