About Maintenance Loan Calculator

Maintenance Loan Calculator exists to answer one question properly: “How much money will I actually have to live on at university?”

That sounds like a simple question. In practice, the answer sits across dozens of official pages, four different funding systems and a household income rule that trips up most families. We built this site so that a student in Year 13, a parent filling in the income form, or someone returning to study at 40 can get a clear, correct answer in under a minute.

Why we built it

When we looked at how people search for student finance, the same frustrations came up again and again:

• The official calculator only covers England, and asks for course credits many applicants don’t know yet.
• Students in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland have completely different systems – grants, bursaries and income bands – and most tools ignore them.
• Parents don’t know what “household income” means. They use take-home pay, forget pension contributions and don’t know that a £1,130 allowance applies for each other child.
• Nobody shows the money the way students spend it – per term, per month, per week – or connects it to rent, payment dates and what gets repaid later.

So we built a set of tools that start from the official rules and end with the numbers people actually plan with.

What you’ll find here

• The maintenance loan calculator for all four UK nations, with per-term and monthly figures, the income taper explained and a chart that shows where you sit.
• The household income calculator, which works out income the way Student Finance England does.
• The parental contribution calculator, so families can have an honest conversation about the gap.
• The repayment calculator for Plans 1, 2, 4, 5 and Postgraduate loans.
• The budget planner and payment dates planner, because knowing your loan is only useful if you know when it arrives and whether it covers your rent.
• Plain-English guides to the questions our tools can’t answer on their own.

Where our numbers come from

Every figure on this site comes from a primary source:

• GOV.UK and the Student Loans Company (SLC) for England, including the SLC’s practitioner guidance on how entitlement is assessed
• Student Finance Wales, SAAS and Student Finance NI / nidirect for the devolved nations
• GOV.UK repayment guidance for thresholds, interest rates and write-off rules

We don’t copy figures from other calculators or forums. Where an official body doesn’t publish the exact formula – as with part of the Northern Ireland loan taper – we say so on the page and show our result as an estimate.

How we check it

• Every calculator is tested against the official published figures before it goes live – for example, the England calculator reproduces the SLC’s maximum and minimum loans and the incomes where each minimum is reached.
• Every page shows when its figures were last checked. You’ll see the date on each calculator and guide.
• We re-check when the rules change – when new rates are published for the next academic year, when repayment thresholds or interest rates change, and when GOV.UK updates its guidance.
• Our full method is on the How we calculate page, including the formulas and the known limits.

What we don’t do

• We don’t lend money or arrange credit, and we don’t earn commission from lenders.
• We don’t store what you type into the calculators. The calculations run in your browser.
• We don’t give personal financial advice. Our results are estimates to help you plan. Your actual award comes from your student finance provider.
• We’re not part of the government. We are not affiliated with GOV.UK, Student Finance England, the Student Loans Company or any devolved funding body.

Who runs it

Maintenance Loan Calculator was founded and is run by Ashish Yadav, an independent web developer who builds free, single-purpose calculators. Ashish writes the code, researches the rules and edits every guide. You can find him on LinkedIn.

How the site is funded

The calculators and guides are free. The site is paid for by advertising (clearly labelled, from Google AdSense) and, if you choose it, an optional Premium pass for extra planning tools and an ad-free experience. Advertisers have no say over what we write, and paying for Premium doesn’t change any calculation.

Spotted a mistake?

Student finance rules change, and we’d rather hear about an error than leave it online. Email hello.maintenanceloancalculator@gmail.com or use the contact form. Tell us the page, what looks wrong and, if you can, the official source. We aim to reply within two working days and fix confirmed errors straight away, noting the change on the page.