Help to Save on Universal Credit: eligibility, bonus and how it affects UC

Help to Save is a government savings account for people on Universal Credit who are working, which adds a 50% bonus to what you save. It was launched in September 2018 under the Savings (Government Contributions) Act 2017 and the Help-to-Save Accounts Regulations 2018. You pay in between £1 and £50 each calendar month, and the account runs for 4 years. HMRC's press release puts it simply: an extra 50 pence is added for every £1 saved. The bonuses come at two points, after 2 years and after 4 years, and they are worked out from the highest balance you reach rather than from interest. Saving the full £50 every month for 4 years gives £2,400 of your own money and £1,200 in bonuses. You apply to HMRC, which decides who is eligible, and the money is yours to withdraw at any time, although taking it out can shrink the bonus. The scheme was originally due to end in September 2023 and was extended twice, to April 2025 and then to April 2027, before the government made it permanent. The bigger change for Universal Credit claimants came on 6 April 2025, when the earnings test fell to £1 of take-home pay, so almost every working claimant now qualifies. HMRC estimated that this made an extra 550,000 people eligible. Take-up is still low, in the Treasury's own words. This guide covers who can open an account on Universal Credit, how the bonuses are calculated, what the savings do to your award, and what is changing in 2028.

You are eligible for Help to Save if you are getting Universal Credit and you, with your partner if it is a joint claim, had take-home pay of £1 or more in your last monthly assessment period. Gov.uk defines take-home pay as your pay after deductions such as tax or National Insurance. That is the whole earnings test. There is no minimum number of hours and no threshold tied to the minimum wage. The rule is in regulation 3(3) of the Help-to-Save Accounts Regulations 2018. Its earnings part, regulation 3(3)(b), was substituted from 6 April 2025 by regulation 2(2) of the Help-to-Save Accounts Regulations 2025 (SI 2025/327), which also removed the old reference to the National Living Wage rate. The test is checked on two dates, which the Act calls the eligibility reference dates: the day you apply and the day your application is accepted. On both, you must be getting an award of Universal Credit that is not a nil award. The earnings part looks only at the assessment period that ended before the day you apply. So if you had no earnings in your last assessment period, you need to wait until a period in which you did earn has ended. A nil award does not count. If your earnings are high enough to bring your Universal Credit down to nothing in a month, which is how the taper works, you cannot open an account in that month, even though you are still on the claim. Gov.uk's own pages do not mention the nil-award point, but the regulation says it in terms. Self-employed claimants can meet the test on the regulations, because it uses earned income as Universal Credit counts it. Regulation 52 defines earned income as the profits of a trade, profession or vocation, and also any income treated as earned income. That second part matters. If you are in gainful self-employment and the minimum income floor applies to you, regulation 62 treats you as having earned income equal to the floor in any assessment period where your actual earnings are lower. So for a self-employed claimant on the minimum income floor, the earned income is the floor, and the £1 test is met even in a month with no profit. Without the floor, £1 or more of profit in the last assessment period is enough. Surplus earnings carried into a new claim are also treated as earned income, under regulation 54A. Gov.uk only ever talks about take-home pay, and HMRC has not published how it checks self-employed earnings when you apply. If you work for yourself, the self-employed calculator shows what your Universal Credit is based on. Couples are looked at together. On a joint claim, the earnings are the couple's together. Gov.uk says you qualify if you, with your partner, had take-home pay of £1 or more, and that you and your partner can each apply for your own account, separately. Each account belongs to one person, so a couple can have two accounts and save up to £50 a month each. You must also be living in the UK, unless you are a Crown servant or a member of the British armed forces, or the spouse or civil partner of one. The scheme has no minimum age of its own. Universal Credit is normally for people aged 18 or over, with some exceptions at 16 and 17, and the Act lets a 16 or 17-year-old contract for an account as if they were 18.

Five groups cannot open an account: people not on Universal Credit, people on a nil award, people with no earnings in their last assessment period, anyone who has had an account before, and most people living abroad. The first three come from the eligibility test above. The fourth is the one people most often miss. The Act only allows an account to be opened for someone who has never had one, and gov.uk says that once your account closes you will not be able to reopen it or open another Help to Save account. That applies even if you closed it early, and even if it ran its full 4 years. It is one account per person, for life. The fifth is the UK connection condition: you have to be in the UK when you apply. The exceptions are Crown servants and members of the British armed forces posted overseas, and their spouses or civil partners. The Working Tax Credit route has also gone. Regulation 3(2) still describes a route for people with a current award of Working Tax Credit, but tax credits ended on 5 April 2025 and nobody can make a new claim, so nobody can now hold a current award. Universal Credit is the only way in. If you were one of the people moved from tax credits to Universal Credit, you qualify on the Universal Credit test in the same way as anyone else. People who already had an account opened through Working Tax Credit keep it until it closes, because eligibility is only tested when an account is opened. Being on Universal Credit with no work at all is not enough today. That is the group the 2028 changes are aimed at, for claimants who have children or caring responsibilities, and they are covered further down.

You can pay in between £1 and £50 each calendar month, and you do not have to pay in every month. The limit runs by calendar month, not by the date you opened the account. Gov.uk's example is that if you have saved £50 by 8 January, you will not be able to pay in again until 1 February. Unused room does not roll over, so a month you miss is lost for good: you cannot pay £100 the following month to catch up. The £50 is also a gross figure. Regulation 12(2) says the monthly maximum ignores previous withdrawals, so taking money out does not free up room to pay it back in during the same month. You can pay in by debit card, standing order or bank transfer. A standing order on payday is the simplest way to make sure every month counts, because the bonus depends on the highest balance you reach. Most savers already do this. HMRC's statistics show the average deposit per person per month has stayed at £48, and 94% of monthly deposits are the full £50. Over the 4 years the most you can pay in is £2,400, which is 48 months at £50. If money is tight in a particular month, it is fine to pay in a small amount or nothing at all. The account stays open and you can carry on later. What matters for the bonus is how high the balance gets, not whether you paid in every month.

You can earn two tax-free bonuses, one after 2 years and one after 4 years, each worth 50% of how much your highest balance grew. The first bonus is 50% of the highest balance you reach in years 1 and 2. The final bonus is 50% of the difference between two figures: the highest balance in years 1 and 2, and the highest balance in years 3 and 4. If your highest balance does not increase in the second half, gov.uk says you will not earn a final bonus. The best case shows how the £1,200 maximum is reached. Save £50 a month for 24 months and your highest balance is £1,200, so the first bonus is £600. Keep saving £50 a month with no withdrawals and the highest balance in years 3 and 4 is £2,400. The final bonus is 50% of the £1,200 growth, another £600, making £1,200 in total. Gov.uk's own example is smaller: pay in £25 a month for 2 years, with nothing withdrawn, and the highest balance is £600, so the first bonus is £300. The worked examples table below sets out four patterns side by side, including what a withdrawal costs. A few rules sit underneath. The bonus is worked out on whole pounds only, at 50 pence for each whole pound of the qualifying balance. It is paid into your bank account, not into the Help to Save account, and regulation 13(7) says it must be paid within 21 days of the end of the 2-year or 4-year period. You keep any bonus you have already earned even if you withdraw money later. But if the account is closed before the end of a bonus period, the bonus for that period is nil, so closing the account at 23 months loses the first bonus entirely. If the account holder dies, any bonus built up to the date of death is paid to their personal representatives.

Yes, you can withdraw money at any time, but only to your own bank account, and doing so can reduce or wipe out the final bonus. Regulation 11 says there is no restriction on the amount or timing of withdrawals, apart from the provider's normal business hours. Gov.uk warns that taking money out makes it harder to grow your highest balance and earn the largest possible bonuses. A bonus already earned is safe. The risk is to the bonus still to come, because the final bonus only pays on growth above the highest balance in years 1 and 2. Here is how that works. Save £50 a month for 2 years and the first bonus is £600. Withdraw £1,000 at the start of year 3 and keep saving £50 a month, and your highest balance in years 3 and 4 is £1,400. That is only £200 above the first-half peak, so the final bonus is £100 instead of £600. Stop paying in after 2 years and leave the money untouched, and the final bonus is £0, because the balance never rises above £1,200. Withdrawals are common. HMRC's tables record 207,650 people who have made a withdrawal, taking out about £150 million in total. For many people that is the point of the account: it is a cushion for an emergency, and a smaller final bonus is the price. After 4 years the account closes. Gov.uk says you can keep the money from your account, but you cannot reopen it or open another one. The 4 years run from the calendar month the account was opened, and they end early if the account holder becomes terminally ill or dies.

Your Help to Save balance counts towards Universal Credit's savings limits like any other savings account, but the bonus is not treated as income, and one person's account alone cannot take them over £6,000. A couple with two full accounts can go over. Start with the balance. DWP's guidance on money, savings and investments lists Help to Save by name among the accounts that are taken into account, alongside bank, building society, credit union, Post Office and NS&I accounts. Regulation 46 of the Universal Credit Regulations 2013 counts the whole of a person's capital unless it is disregarded, and none of the disregards in Schedule 10 mentions Help to Save. There is no Help to Save rule anywhere in the Universal Credit Regulations or in DWP's decision makers' guidance on capital. So the balance is ordinary capital, counted at its full value. Tax credits did have a special rule: the Tax Credits and Childcare (Miscellaneous Amendments) Regulations 2018 added Help to Save bonuses to the investment income that tax credits ignored. No equivalent was ever made for Universal Credit. The bonus is a different matter. Regulation 66 is a closed list of the kinds of unearned income that count, and a Help to Save bonus is not on it. DWP's guidance says that if a type of income is not listed, it does not affect the award, and gov.uk says your Help to Save bonuses will not affect your Universal Credit payments. Neither gov.uk nor DWP's guidance says in terms how a bonus is treated once it is sitting in your bank account. On the regulations it is then simply money in the bank, which counts as capital, because no disregard in Schedule 10 covers it. Withdrawals change nothing. Money in your bank account is also capital, so moving money from Help to Save to your bank account moves it between two kinds of savings and leaves the total the same. Now the limits. Savings up to £6,000 have no effect at all. Between £6,000 and £16,000, Universal Credit assumes an income of £4.35 a month for every £250, or part of £250, above £6,000, and takes it off your award. Above £16,000, Universal Credit stops. For one person, a full Help to Save account holds at most £2,400 of deposits, and even adding the full £1,200 of bonuses gives £3,600, well under £6,000. So a single person's Help to Save can only change the award when it is added to other savings that already come close to £6,000. Couples are different, because a couple's savings are added together. Two full accounts hold £4,800 between them before any bonus, which is under £6,000 but leaves only £1,200 of room for everything else. If the bonuses are kept in the bank rather than spent, the two first bonuses of £600 each come to £1,200 and use up that room on their own. With both final bonuses kept as well, the couple has £7,200, which is £1,200 over £6,000. That is 5 steps of £250, so on the regulations the award falls by £21.75 a month until the money is spent or the savings drop. As an example, someone with £5,000 in the bank and £1,200 in Help to Save has £6,200 in total, which is £200 over the limit and counts as one part step, so their award falls by £4.35 a month. The savings and capital calculator works this out for any figures: enter the Help to Save balance as ordinary savings, not as disregarded money. The guide to how Universal Credit is calculated shows where that deduction sits in the overall award.

If your Universal Credit stops after your account is open, you keep the account and can carry on saving and earning bonuses. Gov.uk says that if you stop claiming benefits, you can keep using your Help to Save account. The reason is that eligibility is only tested on the two dates around your application. Nothing in the regulations checks it again, so coming off Universal Credit because your earnings rose, because you moved in with a partner who earns more, or for any other reason does not close the account or stop the bonuses. Report the change to Universal Credit as usual, as a change of circumstances, and the account carries on regardless. That makes the timing worth thinking about. If you are about to start work or increase your hours enough to end your claim, opening the account while you still have an award and earnings in the last assessment period keeps the full 4 years open to you. The better off in work calculator shows what a given salary would leave of your award. Moving abroad is treated differently. Under regulation 6 of the 2018 regulations, an account holder who stops meeting the UK connection condition keeps the benefits of the account built up so far, but must not pay anything in for as long as they are not in the UK, and the monthly maximum becomes nil. You must tell the account provider within 14 days of the first day you stop meeting the condition. If you do not, HMRC can impose a penalty of up to £300, which can be taken out of your bonus. To decide whether someone abroad is still treated as being in the UK, Help to Save borrows Universal Credit's own rules in regulations 9 to 11 of the Universal Credit Regulations, which going abroad on Universal Credit explains.

You apply online through gov.uk or in the HMRC app, and it takes a few minutes if you have your details to hand. Applications go to HMRC, which decides whether you are eligible. On gov.uk you start at the Help to Save page and sign in to HMRC online services. You can use a Government Gateway user ID or a GOV.UK One Login, and if you have neither you can create sign-in details the first time. To prove who you are, you need your National Insurance number or postcode, plus 2 of the following: a valid UK passport, a UK photocard driving licence issued by the DVLA (or the DVA in Northern Ireland), details from a Self Assessment tax return in the last 2 years, information held on your credit record such as loans, credit cards or a mortgage, or details of a past tax credit claim if you made one. You will also be asked for your UK bank details, because withdrawals and bonuses are paid into that account. The HMRC app lets you check your eligibility for, apply for and manage your Help to Save account, and HMRC says nearly 24,000 people opened an account through the app in the last year. Once you are in, you can check your balance, see your savings and bonus, find out when your next bonus is due, read messages, find out how to set up a standing order and withdraw money to your bank account. If you are turned down because of a nil award, or because you had no earnings in the assessment period that ended before you applied, both can change from one month to the next, so you can apply again after a later assessment period ends. An earlier Help to Save account is the one bar that never lifts.

No. Help to Save has been made permanent, and from April 2028 it is due to widen to Universal Credit claimants who get the child element, the carer element or both. The current version of the scheme was extended to 5 April 2027. The Budget 2025 then said the government will make the scheme permanent and, from April 2028, will expand eligibility to include all Universal Credit claimants who receive the child element, the caring element or both. Read as written, that brings in claimants with children or caring responsibilities whether or not they are working, alongside the working claimants who already qualify. The Treasury's June 2026 response describes the same group as all Universal Credit households with children or caring responsibilities, and HMRC says the earning criteria will be removed for people with caring responsibilities. If you get the carer element for looking after someone, you would be in the new group. HMRC's September 2026 press release goes further and says the scheme will be open to all Universal Credit claimants, but the Budget and the Treasury's June 2026 response both describe a narrower group, so this guide uses the Budget wording. HMRC's press release estimates that an additional 1.5 million households will become eligible. The way accounts are run is changing too. Today a single provider runs every account. The Treasury's June 2026 response confirms a multi-provider model, so that the scheme can be offered through banks, building societies and credit unions. HMRC will still decide who is eligible, and the core features, including deposit limits, bonus structure and account design, will be the same at every provider. The Treasury plans to keep the 4-year account and the 50% bonus while simplifying the bonus calculation, paying it every six months instead of at 2 and 4 years, and paying it into the account rather than to your bank. It says it will work towards opening registration for the reformed scheme in 2028, subject to final design and implementation planning. None of the reforms is law yet: no regulations making these changes had been made by October 2026, so treat the details as planned. Two things have not been published. The first is what happens to new applications between 5 April 2027 and the reformed scheme opening in 2028. The second is whether accounts opened under the current scheme move to six-monthly bonuses or keep the 2-year and 4-year bonuses. If you are eligible now, the rules for opening an account today are the ones set out above.

656,700 Help to Save accounts had been opened by April 2026, and 293,600 of them were still open. Those figures come from HMRC's annual savings statistics published in September 2026, which say the underlying data is provided by National Savings and Investments (NS&I). Since the start of the scheme, around 566,650 people have paid money in, and HMRC's tables record total deposits of £676.7 million. Deposits in the 12 months from April 2025 to March 2026 were around £88 million. Savers tend to pay in the maximum: the average deposit per person per month has stayed at £48, and 94% of monthly deposits are the full £50. At the other end, 38,600 open accounts have never received a deposit, which means those account holders are earning no bonus at all. The £1 earnings test is already showing up in the numbers. Around 85,100 accounts were opened from April 2025 to March 2026, compared with 55,750 the year before, and HMRC says that might be a result of the expansion to all working Universal Credit claimants. HMRC's press release of 21 September 2026 says more than £300 million has been paid out in bonuses. By nation, England accounts for 562,300 of the accounts opened, Scotland 44,950, Wales 30,450 and Northern Ireland 18,550. The Treasury's June 2026 response still describes take-up as low.