Explainer
What Is Pro Rata Salary? FTE vs Pro Rata vs Take-Home (2026)
If you’ve ever seen a job advert quoting one salary, then found your offer letter showing another — and your bank balance showing a third — you’ve met the three figures that “pro rata salary” quietly hides. They’re easy to confuse, and many pay misunderstandings come down to comparing the wrong figures. The breakdown below sorts the three apart; if you’d rather see your own gross figure first, calculate your pro rata salary.
What is pro rata salary? Pro rata salary is a full-time salary figure scaled to the hours or days you actually work. The word pro rata is Latin for “in proportion.” Three different numbers get tangled up here:
- FTE (full-time-equivalent) — the headline figure on the advert, as if you worked full time.
- Pro-rata gross — the FTE figure scaled to your actual schedule. This is what you’re really paid, before tax.
- Net take-home — your pro-rata gross after tax and deductions. Typically the lowest of the three.
Figure #2 — your real pro-rata gross — is the one worth pinning down, since it’s what an offer actually pays; scaling the FTE figure to your hours or days is all it takes, and the calculator on this page walks that step on your own numbers.
FTE vs Pro Rata: The Figure on the Advert Isn’t Your Pay
Start with the one that trips people up first. FTE — full-time-equivalent — is a comparison figure. When a part-time or seasonal role advertises “£35,000 (pro rata),” that £35,000 is what the role would pay at full time. It lets candidates line up two roles side by side on the same footing, even if one is three days a week and the other is five.
Your pro-rata gross is that headline figure scaled to your actual schedule. Work 3 of 5 days and the calculation is £35,000 × 3/5 = £21,000. The advert may simply be showing the FTE figure rather than your actual pro-rata pay — it just was not your number. This is why reading “(pro rata)” next to a salary matters: it signals that the figure shown may be the FTE rather than the amount paid for your working pattern.
Pro-Rata Gross vs Net Take-Home: Don’t Compare Across the Line
The second mix-up is comparing your gross pro-rata salary with your net take-home. They’re separated by tax and deductions, and they will never match.
Your pro-rata gross is a proportion of the FTE figure — still a before-anything-comes-out number. From it, payroll may deduct Income Tax, National Insurance, workplace pension contributions and any other deductions shown on your payslip. What is left is your net pay: the figure you actually receive. Net is lower than gross whenever deductions apply, and the difference depends on your tax code and circumstances.
This is exactly why this article and the calculator stay in gross. Income Tax and National Insurance depend on your tax code, pay period and personal circumstances — variables a pro-rata calculation cannot safely infer. Compare the result with the gross line on your payslip or offer, not the take-home amount in your bank. Use HMRC guidance or a dedicated UK take-home-pay calculator for deductions.
How to Calculate Pro Rata Salary
Underneath the jargon, pro rata is just a fraction. You take the full-time figure and multiply it by your share of full time. The share can be expressed in a few ways:
- By days: 3 of 5 working days a week →
× 3/5. - By hours: 21 of a 35-hour full-time week →
× 21/35(which is also 3/5). - By a partial period: starting part-way through a month or year → scaled to the days actually worked.
For the same role, these usually agree — 3 of 5 days and 21 of 35 hours are the same proportion. Where figures diverge is in how a period is counted (working days vs calendar days vs an annualized basis), which matters most for partial-month starts rather than steady part-time work.
To see your own number, check your pro rata gross pay with the free calculator: enter the full-time figure and your hours or days, and it returns your pro-rata gross with the formula spelled out. The same working-pattern fraction can estimate your part-time holiday allowance; most UK workers are entitled to 5.6 weeks of paid holiday, capped at 28 statutory days for someone working five or more days a week. Use the pro rata holiday calculator for that weekly pattern, or the annual leave calculator if you joined or left during the leave year.
A Quick Way to Tell the Three Figures Apart
When a number looks wrong, label it before you worry:
- Is it the advert figure? That’s the FTE — it’s meant to look bigger; it’s not your pay.
- Is it before or after tax? Before tax is your pro-rata gross; after tax is net take-home. Never compare one to the other.
- Does the gross match your schedule? Run the FTE figure through the calculator with your hours or days. If the pro-rata gross matches your payslip’s gross line, everything is consistent.
Most of the time, the “mismatch” isn’t an error at all — it’s two different figures being compared as if they were one. Knowing which is which turns a confusing payslip into a number you can check — and if you’d like to watch the proportion worked out line by line, the calculator sits at the top of the page.
▲ Check your own figure
Plug your numbers into the pro rata calculator — it shows the full working, so you can see exactly which days were counted.