Pay rise calculator 2026
A pay rise is not paid out in full: tax and social contributions take a share of the extra income at the marginal rate for that slice of pay. For a chosen country, gross salary and raise amount, the calculator computes the net increase and the share of the raise that is actually kept.
Reference profile: single, no children, standard region. Uses documented country datasets and their verification status for 2026. Your exact net may differ.
- You keep56.17 %
- Marginal deduction rate43.83 %
- Net now€2,056.83
- Net after the raise€2,225.33
Net pay by gross
Illustration only, not financial advice. Assumes a constant rate and regular intervals; real products vary. Verify with a professional.
How the net increase is derived
The calculator runs your country's own gross-to-net salary engine twice: once on your current gross pay, once on your current gross plus the raise you enter. Both runs use the same 2026 dataset and the same single-person reference profile, so the only thing that changes between them is the gross figure. The net increase is simply the difference between the two results: net after the raise minus net now. Dividing that difference by the gross raise gives the keep-percentage, the share of the raise that survives as extra take-home pay. Subtracting the keep-percentage from 100 gives the marginal deduction rate, so the two figures always add up to exactly 100%. Both net amounts are rounded to the cent before the subtraction, and the percentages are rounded to two decimal places.
A worked example: EUR 300 more a month
Open the calculator, choose Germany, and leave the defaults as they are: a current gross salary of EUR 3,000 a month and a raise of EUR 300 a month, both for a single person with no children on the standard reference settings. The tool computes a net pay of EUR 2,056.83 on the current gross and EUR 2,225.33 once the raise is added. The difference is a net increase of EUR 168.50. Divide that by the EUR 300 raise and you keep 56.17% of it; the remaining 43.83% goes to tax and social contributions at the margin. You can reproduce every one of these figures by entering the same three numbers, country, current gross, raise, into the calculator above and reading the result panel.
The reference profile behind every number
Every result comes from a single, fixed reference profile: one person, no children, no church tax or equivalent, a standard region or tax class, and no other income, deductions, or benefits in kind. The raise is treated as a flat addition to gross salary, applied evenly and instantly, not phased in, not paid as a bonus, not subject to a probation period. Both the before and after calculations use the exact same tax and contribution rules for the same reference year, so nothing about the underlying rules changes between the two runs, only the gross amount does. This isolates the effect of the raise itself from every other variable that would normally move alongside a real pay change, which is exactly what makes the comparison clean, but also what makes it generic.
What your real payslip could do differently
Real pay rises rarely arrive as a clean, isolated change. They can shift you into a different tax bracket for the whole year rather than just the raised months, alter entitlement to income-tested benefits or allowances, coincide with a bonus, a change in working hours, or an employer benefit, and interact with a marital status, number of children, or region the reference profile does not have. Some countries reconcile tax annually rather than monthly, so a mid-year rise can land differently than a straight monthly comparison suggests. The calculator also cannot know about employer-specific extras, a 13th salary, meal vouchers, private pension top-ups, that are common in some countries and absent in others. None of that is modelled here; the result is a mechanical comparison, not a payroll simulation.
Using the keep-percentage without over-reading it
The keep-percentage and net increase are best used for comparison, not prediction: comparing the same raise across two countries, comparing a raise against a different offer, or sanity-checking that a proposed increase is roughly in the right range before you ask payroll for an exact figure. The chart above the result plots net pay across a wide range of gross salaries in the same country and profile, so you can see whether the keep-percentage you got is typical for that income level, or unusually high or low. Treat the output as an informed estimate under one specific set of assumptions, not as the number that will appear on next month's payslip, and remember that any resulting income may be taxed differently depending on where you live.
FAQ
Why is my net increase always smaller than the gross raise?
Because tax and social contributions apply to the extra gross pay just as they apply to the rest of your salary, so only part of the raise reaches your net pay. The exact share depends on the country's tax and contribution structure and where the raise falls within it, which is exactly what the marginal deduction rate shows for that specific increase.
Why does the same raise keep a different percentage in another country?
Tax rates, social contribution rates, and the income thresholds where they change are set independently by each country and differ substantially. The calculator applies each country's own verified rules to the same gross figures, so a EUR 300 raise can leave you with a very different keep-percentage depending only on which country you select, nothing else in the calculation changes.
Does the marginal deduction rate match my country's published tax bracket?
Not directly. It blends income tax, employee social contributions, and any thresholds the raise happens to cross, all recomputed for your specific gross and raise amounts. A published tax bracket rate covers income tax alone; the figure here covers everything deducted between your net pay before and after the raise, for the reference profile only.
Does the calculator account for the raise pushing me into a higher bracket?
Yes, within the reference profile: because it fully recalculates net pay at the new gross figure rather than applying a flat rate to the raise, any bracket or threshold the raise crosses is captured automatically. It does not, however, know about brackets or thresholds tied to your actual marital status, region, or other income, since those fall outside the profile used here.