Hundred SummersTax-Free Childcare calculator: the 20% top-up, the caps and the cliff
The £2 the government adds for every £8 you pay in, capped per child, the working and earnings tests both parents must meet, and the £100,000 income cliff, with the pension contribution that restores eligibility. Your figures never leave your browser.
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Worked example
Computed when this page was built by the same engine that runs the calculator above, so the figures below and the live tool can never disagree. Change any input above to see your own.
| Inputs | |
|---|---|
| Childcare bill a year | £12,000 |
| Children | 1 |
| Parents' adjusted net incomes | £45,000 and £30,000 |
| Results | |
|---|---|
| Eligible | Yes |
| Government top-up a year | £2,000 |
| You pay in | £10,000 |
| Capped at the per-child maximum | Yes: £2,000 a child |
The next question
What if one of us earns over £100,000? →£100k childcare cliff calculator
Or answer it with everything else: the full Hundred Summers plan connects your pay, pensions, savings, property, tax and spending year by year, and stress-tests them across 500 simulated market histories.
Read the guides
- Benefits and allowances people miss: what to check, and where →The entitlements most often left unclaimed in the UK (Pension Credit, Attendance Allowance, Carer's Allowance, Marriage Allowance, Council Tax Reduction and the help each one unlocks) with 2026/27 rates from gov.uk and the free, independent calculators to check your own. A signpost, not a checker. Education, not advice.
- The £100k childcare cliff: the worst-designed threshold in UK finance →Cross £100,000 of adjusted net income by £1 and you lose all free childcare hours and Tax-Free Childcare: on top of the 60% tax zone. How the cliff works, which parent counts, and the pension escape route.
- Maternity leave and money: what the year really costs, and what to protect →Statutory maternity pay week by week, why the take-home lost is less than the gross gap, the three things to protect while on leave (the child benefit claim, the pension, the State Pension record), and how part-time afterwards prices out.
How the account works
You open an online childcare account per child, pay in, and the government adds 20% on top: £2 for every £8, up to £500 a quarter (£2,000 a year), or £1,000 a quarter for a disabled child. The money then pays a registered provider. It replaced childcare vouchers, which closed to new entrants in 2018; anyone still on vouchers must choose, because the two cannot run together, and neither can Tax-Free Childcare run alongside the childcare element of Universal Credit.
The tests, and the cliff
Both parents must work and each earn at least 16 hours a week at the National Living Wage; neither may have adjusted net income over £100,000. That figure is a cliff, not a taper: a pound over loses the top-up and the 30 funded hours together, which is why the childcare cliff calculator prices the pension contribution that brings you back under. The child benefit calculator covers the other family benefit with an income test.
Sources
- gov.uk, Tax-Free Childcare.
- gov.uk, National Minimum Wage and National Living Wage rates (the earnings test).