PhD Salary UK: How Much Do PhD Students Get Paid vs Graduates?

Considering whether you should become a PhD student or leave university to start a graduate job? If so, you may be wondering how much PhD students get paid, and how a PhD salary in the UK compares to a typical graduate salary.

At first glance, the difference can look pretty stark. PhD stipends are often quoted as being far lower than graduate wages, which understandably puts a lot of people off – especially if you’re already carrying student loan debt. But there’s more to it than initially meets the eye.

In this post I dig into the numbers and show why the difference in take-home pay between a UK PhD stipend and a graduate salary is often much smaller than it first appears.

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Do PhD students get paid in the UK?

Yes – PhD students typically get paid in the UK, with most receiving a ‘PhD stipend’, rather than a salary. This is paid to support living costs during the PhD and is tax free. In a moment we’ll cover the minimum PhD stipends for 2026/27.

However, it’s important to first note that not all PhD projects automatically include funding, and eligibility can depend on factors such as residency status. Therefore, some students may resort to self funding their PhD.

In STEM subjects, self-funding is relatively rare, but it does happen. I’ve personally worked with a mix of funded and self-funded PhD students, though most have been funded by grants and scholarships.

If your project doesn’t include funding, I strongly recommend exploring funding routes before considering self-funding. I’ve written a separate guide on PhD Funding in the UK that goes through this in detail.

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2026/27 UK Minimum PhD Stipends

March 2026 note: These are the current PhD stipend rates in the UK as of writing. UKRI typically increases minimum stipends annually and last year they did so by 5%. Therefore, if you’re considering starting a PhD in future years you can expect an increase compared to the numbers below.

• Outside London: £21,805 per year
• London: £23,805 per year (includes London weighting)

These figures form the baseline for what most people mean when they talk about a typical PhD salary in the UK. However, some studentships pay above the minimum. I’ve seen CDTs outside of London paying closer to £24,000 tax free, and some scholarship schemes go significantly higher. In fact, the PrO-AI CDT at Bristol is paying home PhD students starting in September 2026 the £21,805 outlined above plus an additional £10,000 per year via the Government’s TechExpert Pilot funding!

It’s worth noting that it’s usually stated on the advert if the rate will increase during your period of study. By default, it’s best to assume that pay won’t increase once you’ve started.

Funding usually lasts 3.5 years, but can occasionally be for 3 or 4 years.

Wondering how stipends have changed over the years? I’ve been tracking them for a while so here you go:

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Higher-paying scholarships worth knowing about

Some schemes sit well above the standard stipend, for example:

• President’s PhD Scholarships (Imperial College London): £26,500 (2026/27), tax free
• Marie Skłodowska-Curie Doctoral Networks: approximately £40,000–£45,000 (taxable), plus strong training and mobility opportunities

These are competitive, but absolutely worth being aware of early on. I personally wish I’d known about Marie Curie funding sooner and always recommend setting a reminder for when the next call opens.

For more details on how to get a scholarship, check out this article where I go over how I secured my own PhD scholarship.

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Is a UK PhD stipend taxable?

Here are what PhD stipends look like in comparison to some fairly typical starting grad salaries in the UK:

At first glance a PhD stipend doesn’t stack up well against the higher wages of a graduate salary – which can sometimes be twice as high. But there’s a crucial difference: PhD stipends for students are tax free!

Therefore, to understand the real difference between a PhD stipend vs a grad salary, we need to look at take-home pay rather than headline numbers.

Once you factor in tax, student loan repayments, and other costs, the gap between a PhD stipend and a graduate salary shrinks dramatically. While a £21,805 PhD stipend remains untouched by tax, a £30,000 grad salary reduces by nearly £6000 to just over £24,000:

In the rest of this post I’ll walk through this comparison step by step, with each section showing how the salary gap changes as different deductions are applied.

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UK grad salary vs PhD salary starting numbers

As mentioned earlier, in 2026/27 a typical PhD stipend outside of London is at least £21,805. While within London this will typically increase to at least £23,805. To simplify the comparison, I’ll use an average PhD stipend of £22,805 per year (tax free).

For graduates, I’ll use a £30,000 starting salary as a reasonable benchmark for someone considering a STEM PhD. Of course this is an average salary, so needs to be taken with a pinch of salt, but I think it’s a good benchmark accounting for different regions of the UK. Higher and lower salaries are shown in the summary charts later in the post.

Below is a basic comparison of the advertised rates.

Initial salary gap: £7195

On paper, the PhD student earns around 25% less. This headline figure alone is enough to put many people off doing a PhD.

But this is where the comparison gets more interesting…

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Income Tax & National Insurance Contributions

Currently the UK personal allowance is £12,570. This means that you can earn up to this amount and not pay any income tax. Income above this is taxed at 20% up to £50,270, with National Insurance contributions on top.

PhD student

• PhD stipends are tax free
• No income tax
• No National Insurance
• Remaining stipend: £22,805

Graduate on £30,000

• Income tax: £3,486
• National Insurance: £1,394
• Remaining salary: £25,120

Revised salary gap: £2315

Just accounting for income tax and National Insurance massively cuts the difference in take-home pay, from £7195 to £2315!

This is where the perception of a low PhD salary in the UK starts to shift once you compare like-for-like take-home pay.

This gap shrinks even further once you factor in student loan repayments as we’ll come onto next.

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Student Loan Repayment

PhD students are officially unwaged students, so no student loan repayments are made during a PhD.

PhD student

• No repayments
• Remaining stipend: £22,805¹

Graduate

• For post-2012 loans, repayments start above £27,295
• On £30,000, repayments are about £137 per year
• Remaining salary: £24,983

Revised salary gap: £2178

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Council Tax

Full-time students are exempt from council tax, provided they live only with other students.

PhD student

• No council tax (with caveats)²
• Remaining stipend: £22,805

Graduate

• Council tax rates vary widely – based on my own experience across Cardiff, London, and Bristol, a reasonable average is around £900 per person per year
• Remaining salary: £24,083

Revised salary gap: £1278

Note: In case it’s of interest I also have a complementary post covering my monthly expenses as a PhD student.

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Private Pension Contributions

PhD students are not university employees and therefore do not contribute to a workplace pension.

PhD student

• No pension contributions
• Remaining stipend: £22,805

Graduate

• Pension contributions are now mandatory
• Employers often match contributions (sometimes generously)
• There are tax benefits to contributing so overall you could see it as boosting your salary looking at the longer term view³
• This is a long-term benefit rather than an immediate cost

For simplicity – and because pensions aren’t really “lost” money – I’ll treat this as a draw in the comparison and leave the salary gap unchanged.

Salary gap remains: £1278

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Student Discount

Ah the obvious one! Student discount may have been the first thing you thought of when you saw this article, but I’m not actually going to include it in this analysis.

Yes, a student card does allow a significant amount to be saved, not only on luxuries such as entry to attractions and deals in shops but also travel. For example in London, an 18+ student oystercard gets you 30% off travelcards. For a monthly zones 1-3 ticket this would save about £50 a month: over £600 a year!

The reason I’ve deliberately excluded it?

• How much you use student discount varies by location and lifestyle
• I wanted the comparison to stay broadly applicable

But in practice, this is another small way students can narrow the gap further.

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Curveball: the £12,570 Tax-Free Personal Income Allowance

So far the graduate is still earning £1278 more per year: about 5% more than the PhD student.

But there’s one final twist.

Because PhD stipends are tax free, any additional income up to £12,570 is also tax free.

That creates a surprising financial advantage for PhD students.

It’s very common for PhD students to earn extra money through graduate teaching assistant work, tutoring and consultancy opportunities. In fact, I think almost every PhD student I know earns at least a little on the side.

There are also non-academic routes to boost your income – I’ve written a separate post about some of the ways I personally make extra money online. My favourite is matched betting, and you can read my full guide to that here.

Of course, most people won’t earn the full £12,570. Universities often cap how much paid work PhD students can do, and time is limited. But earning a few thousand pounds a year is very realistic.

I’ve personally been paid more than £30 an hour for fairly straightforward university work, so these earnings can mount up quickly.

Pay rate	Pay rate description	Hourly rate
Tier 3	Leading educational activities.	£36.50
Tier 2	Lab and Computing demonstrators. Seminar GTAs. Rapid Feedback roles. Marking with academic interpretation required (lab reports).	£27.46
Tier 1	Exam invigilation. Student support roles e.g., note taking. Marking of assessed problem sheets, Undergraduate lab demonstrators, exam check marking.	£22.44

The above rates hopefully give you a sense of how quickly a small amount of teaching or demonstrating can translate into meaningful extra income over a year.

Because of how tax works, those extra earnings go much further for PhD students than for salaried graduates.

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Tax-free side-hustle

In the UK, you can earn £12,570 per year tax free. Since a PhD stipend doesn’t count as taxable income, a student could (in theory) earn up to this amount on top of their stipend without paying income tax or National Insurance.

Graduates don’t get the same treatment. They only have a £1000 trading allowance, meaning most of their side income is taxed like normal salary.

That difference in tax treatment creates a surprisingly large gap in take-home pay.

To illustrate just how powerful this is, let’s look at an intentionally extreme example where both a PhD student and a graduate earn an extra £12,570 on the side.

PhD student

• PhD stipend: £22,805
• Side income (tax free): £12,570
• Total take-home: £35,375

The student keeps 100% of their extra earnings.

Graduate

Graduates don’t get the same tax treatment. On an extra £12,570 of income, a graduate would pay an additional:

• Income tax (-£2314)
• National Insurance (-£926)
• Student loan repayments (-£1042)

These add up to £4282 in extra deductions.

• Extra take-home from side work: £8288
• Salary after tax (from earlier sections): £24,083
• Total take-home: £32,371

So for the same £12,570 of side work, the PhD student keeps 100%, while the graduate keeps just 66%.

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The result

Even though both people earned the same extra income:

• The PhD student takes home £35,375
• The graduate takes home £32,371

The PhD student actually ends up with £3004 more per year!

At face value, it looks like the graduate should be far ahead. Pre-tax, their combined income is £42,570 vs £35,375 – a difference of £7195. But once tax and deductions are accounted for, the situation flips.

Yes, this is an extreme example. Most students won’t earn the full £12,570 on the side. But the key takeaway still holds: Extra earnings go much further for PhD students than for salaried graduates

Even a few thousand pounds of additional work can noticeably shrink, or even eliminate, the initial salary gap.

And if someone were running a larger side business, the difference could widen further as the graduate approaches the next tax bracket for earnings above £50,271 where income tax rates double.

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UK grad salary vs PhD student salary conclusion

We started with an apparent salary gap of £7195.

After accounting for:

• Income tax
• National Insurance
• Student loan repayments
• Council tax

The gap falls to £1278 per year – about £106 per month.

And once you factor in the ability to earn tax-free income on the side, that gap can shrink further or even disappear entirely.

Surprised how small the difference is? I certainly was whilst I was writing this!

Here again is the chart comparing a wider range of salaries:

It’s important to note that this analysis doesn’t account for:

• Long-term earning potential after a PhD
• Flexible working and autonomy
• Training, travel, and networking opportunities
• Student discounts (if you use them!)

But purely from a take-home pay perspective, the difference between a PhD salary in the UK and a graduate salary is far smaller than it first appears.

Earlier I showed a graph of how PhD stipends have increased over the past 10 years. For completeness, here is a comparison against median salaries for 22-29 year olds in full time work from the Office for National Statistics. Note: this isn’t just for grad jobs.

I hope that this post has helped explain that the wage gap between UK PhD stipends and grad salaries is not as dramatic as it seems. Perhaps it’s even encouraged you to consider a PhD.

If so I’ve written various posts to help with your application. And if you’re curious to know more about the life of a PhD student you may like to read some profiles of PhD students around the world.

Want personalised help with your PhD application? I offer a small number of one-to-one sessions. Find out more about how to book one here.

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What do you think about this comparison between a UK PhD stipend and grad salary? Do you think there are any additional factors that I have overlooked? Please share your thoughts in the comments below and if you’ve enjoyed this post you can subscribe to learn more about PhD life:

Footnotes

[1] Some people might say that by continuing studying you’re simply delaying your student loan repayment.  Considering most people don’t pay it off in the 30 odd years until any outstanding balance is wiped I think it’s fair to say that this doesn’t ring true.

[2] No council tax is paid on a property if all occupants are students. If you live with one professional they can claim the single occupancy discount of 25% but with two or more professionals the full council tax amount must be paid. If you share in a mixed group it is up to you how you divide it within the group. Ironically given the spirit of this post, last year I voluntarily did pay an equal (third) share of council tax given that my partner was moving to London specifically to live with me…

[3] If you go on to work for a university after your PhD you’ll be enrolled in the USS pension scheme where you’ll usually pay in 9% of your salary and your employer pays in 19%: yes, nineteen! For comparison most often the best private companies may match contributions up to 10%. Pension contributions are often removed from your pay packet before taxes. This effectively leaves you with a smaller salary and hence pay less taxes and national insurance contributions. Between this and your employer’s contributions overall your salary could be “boosted” by quite a bit, around 20% in the USS example, if you consider the pension as part of your long-term salary.

All calculations were carried out using the tax calculator on Martin’s Money Saving Expert. A fantastic website for all things personal finance.