How much maternity pay will I get?

You've got a due date, a rough idea of when you'll stop work, and a household budget that has to last the year. You can follow every step we take with your figures, and check any of them yourself.

Everything starts from your due date. We find the week it falls in, Sunday to Saturday, and count back 15 weeks to your qualifying week. You need to have worked for your employer for 26 weeks by the end of it. Your average weekly earnings come from the payslips dated in the 8 weeks or so up to that point, and we name those pay dates for you, so you know exactly which payslips to dig out. Type in what they say and the average is exact. Leave them out and we'll estimate it from your usual pay, and tell you we have.

Tell your employer about the pregnancy, your due week and your leave date by the end of your qualifying week. Give 28 days' notice for SMP. If either notice isn't reasonably practicable in time, give it as soon as reasonably practicable instead.

SMP lasts 39 weeks from the day your leave starts. The first 6 pay 90% of your average weekly earnings, with no upper limit. The next 33 pay the weekly rate, £194.32 for 2026 to 2027, or 90% of your earnings if that's lower. That rate usually goes up each April. A new one only covers SMP weeks that start on or after the day it comes in, so a week that's already running keeps the old rate. For weeks from 4 April 2027 that take the weekly rate, we use £194.32 until the next figure is published, and mark them provisional.

Then we turn weeks into months. Each day of leave carries a seventh of that week's pay, so a 31-day month holds more SMP than February. The rules round every payment up to the next penny, and so do we. If you're paid weekly, fortnightly or every 4 weeks, each payment goes on the pay date that ends its pay period instead. Your leave can run to 52 weeks, and the 13 weeks after SMP ends show as months with nothing in them, because that's what they are.

If your employer pays more, add the scheme part by part. Each part asks whether it includes your SMP or sits on top of it, and it counts for nothing until you answer, because we won't guess. A part that includes SMP tops it up to that share of your pay, so SMP is only ever counted once. A part on top adds its share to SMP, and we tell you if the two together come to more than your usual pay.

We should own up to one difference. For a part that includes SMP, the law (Schedule 13 to the 1992 Act) sets your employer's pay against SMP week by week, and we do it day by day so that every month adds up. If you're paid monthly and an SMP week crosses the end of a month, our figure can come out a little higher, never lower. In 1,500 random monthly cases we checked on 8 October 2026, the most it added over a whole leave was £28.57.

Some things we leave alone. Tax and National Insurance, Maternity Allowance, Shared Parental Leave, neonatal care pay, adoption and surrogacy aren't worked out here, and nor is Northern Ireland. Keeping-in-touch days aren't included. If your baby comes early, or if you're off sick with your pregnancy in the last 4 weeks, the rules change in ways we haven't built in, and the check before your figures sends you to the right official page instead. GOV.UK is plain that you can't get SMP if you go into police custody during your pay period, and that it won't restart.

The statutory rules come from the Social Security Contributions and Benefits Act 1992, the regulations made under it and the orders that set each year's figures. We label the estimates and assumptions, including figures for years that aren't published yet.