Free tools / Net to gross salary
Free tool · NigeriaNet to gross salary calculator
You told a candidate what they would take home. Now work out what to put in the contract, and what it actually costs the business once your own pension contribution is counted.
Your numbers
Nothing you type here is stored.
The gross salary will appear here
Enter the take-home you want to deliver and press Calculate.
A rounder number for the contract
Want to check it the other way? See how a gross salary becomes take-home pay.
The rules this uses
Tax bands
Applied to yearly taxable pay, which is your gross less pension and any other allowed deductions. Each rate applies only to the slice of income inside that band, not to the whole salary.
| Yearly taxable pay | Tax rate |
|---|---|
| First ₦800,000 | 0% |
| ₦800,001 to ₦3,000,000 | 15% |
| ₦3,000,001 to ₦12,000,000 | 18% |
| ₦12,000,001 to ₦25,000,000 | 21% |
| ₦25,000,001 to ₦50,000,000 | 23% |
| Above ₦50,000,000 | 25% |
Calculation rules: version 2026.1. Based on the Nigeria Tax Act 2025, in effect from 1 January 2026. This is an estimate for planning, negotiating and sanity-checking a payslip. Confirm the treatment of your own package before running payroll on it.
What comes off before tax
- Pension, 8%. Charged on basic, housing and transport rather than on your whole salary. Since most people do not know their exact split, we assume those three make up 80% of gross and let you change it.
- Rent relief. The lower of 20% of your yearly rent or ₦500,000. Left out unless you enter rent, because most employers do not apply it in monthly payroll. Including it by default would show a take-home figure higher than you actually receive.
- Other deductions. National Housing Fund, health insurance and life assurance, where you actually pay them. NHF is no longer compulsory for private sector staff, so nothing is assumed.
Everything optional is switched off by default. That means the figure you see is the most cautious one, and anything you add can only improve it.
What this does and does not do
- It estimates. It is not a payroll run, and it does not replace advice on how a particular package should be structured.
- The gross is found by searching rather than by adding a percentage, because the tax bands are progressive. It is accurate to within a naira.
- Employer cost here is gross plus your 10% pension contribution. It does not include equipment, insurance, recruitment or anything else you spend on having staff.
- It assumes a steady monthly salary with no bonuses or one-off allowances.
- Leaving rent relief and other deductions out raises the gross needed, which is the safer direction for a budget.
Questions people ask
Two things sit in between. Tax is the obvious one, and it is progressive, so the higher the salary the larger the share. The one people forget is pension: the employee\u2019s 8% comes out of the gross you pay, so it is your money funding it even though it never shows as your cost. Together they explain the whole gap.
No, and this is the number that catches employers out. On top of the gross you pay a 10% employer pension contribution, which never appears on the employee\u2019s payslip but leaves your account every month. The true cost line on this page includes it. Budget on that figure, not on the gross.
It is common in Nigeria and candidates often ask in net terms, but be careful. If tax rules change, or their circumstances change, the gross needed to hold that net changes too, and you have effectively promised to absorb it. Agreeing a gross and showing the candidate the expected net is cleaner, and this calculator lets you show them exactly that.
Because the exact answer is usually something like ₦889,227.30, and nobody puts that on a contract. We round up to the nearest thousand and show what that actually delivers, so you can use the figure as it stands. Rounding up rather than down means the employee gets slightly more than promised rather than slightly less.
No. It is a good tool for budgeting a hire, checking an offer, and having an honest conversation with a candidate. Real payroll needs the actual salary structure, the right state authority, and someone accountable for filing it correctly. That is a service rather than a calculator.
The cost of a hire is rarely the number in the offer letter.
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