Benefit Cap Calculator

The benefit cap limits total benefits for working-age households regardless of what their elements add up to. It is applied last, after everything else including the taper, and the whole reduction comes out of Universal Credit. The other benefits are still paid in full.

It was frozen again for 2026/27 while allowances rose and the two-child limit ended, so some larger families found the April changes made less difference than expected. DWP's benefit cap statistics track how many households are capped each quarter. This calculator shows whether you are over the cap, by how much, and which of the four exemptions would lift it completely.

Because the cap did not go up with it. The four amounts were frozen for 2026/27 at £1,835.00 a month for a couple or a household with children outside Greater London, £2,110.25 inside it, and £1,229.42 and £1,413.92 for a single person with no children. Everything they are measured against moved. Standard allowances rose above inflation, and the two-child limit ended, so a third or fourth child now brings a child element (worked out on the child element calculator) of £303.94 a month. For a household under the cap all of that is straightforwardly more money. For a household already over it, each increase is added to the award and then taken back out again, so the payment is unchanged and only the excess grows. That is not an error on the statement, and it is the strongest reason this year to test the exemptions rather than the arithmetic.

£881.00 a month, counted after Income Tax and National Insurance, and counted jointly for a couple, so either of you reaching it is enough and so is the two of you between you. The threshold is not set by the cap. It is defined in law as 16 hours a week at the National Living Wage, currently £12.71 an hour, converted to a monthly amount, which is why it rises with the wage in years when the cap itself is frozen. Two details decide whether it helps you. It is tested in every assessment period on that period's earnings, so a single month below the line can bring the cap back for that month alone. And for self-employed claimants it is real earned income that counts: the minimum income floor is assumed income used to work out an award, and it does not buy an exemption.

There is a grace period of 9 consecutive months in which the cap does not apply, and it is not something you apply for. The condition attached to it is strict. Your earnings, or yours and your partner's combined, must have been at or above £881.00 in each of the twelve months immediately before, so one month below the line inside that year removes the grace period entirely rather than shortening it. The detail people miss is when it starts. It runs from the day your earnings dropped below the threshold, or from the day you stopped work if that came before the claim, not from the day you claimed Universal Credit. Someone who stopped work in January and claimed in April has already spent part of it. When it ends the cap applies from the next assessment period, which is where a payment falls sharply with nothing else having changed.

Three things move it. The childcare costs element is carved out: the reduction is the amount you are over the cap minus any childcare element in that period, and where the childcare element is larger than the excess, no reduction is made at all. This calculator does not ask about childcare, so a household claiming it should see a smaller cut on the statement than here. The second is what you counted as other capped benefits. Child Benefit counts. Personal Independence Payment, Disability Living Allowance, Attendance Allowance and Carer's Allowance do not, and each of them also lifts the cap outright, so putting one in the wrong box produces a reduction that would never be applied. The third is timing. The cap is worked out for each assessment period on that period's figures, so a month containing a bonus or a late reported change behaves differently from the one before it.