5 on 2 off vs 4 on 4 off: which UK shift pattern leaves more take-home pay once tax and National Insurance come off? A worked comparison.
If you’ve been offered a job on a 4-on-4-off rota, or you’re weighing up a move from a standard Monday-to-Friday role, the first question is usually about your days off. The second, and the one that matters more for your bank balance, is whether you’ll actually take home more money.
The honest answer to 5 on 2 off vs 4 on 4 off is that it depends on three things: your contracted hours, any night or weekend premiums, and what tax and National Insurance do to the gross difference. I’ll walk through the maths with real 2026/27 figures, because the headline hourly rate rarely tells you the whole story.
A 5-on-2-off pattern is five working days followed by two days off, usually fixed shifts of around eight hours, often Monday to Friday. A 4-on-4-off pattern is four working days followed by four days off, almost always built on twelve-hour shifts, and frequently rotating through both days and nights.
The day-count looks similar, but the hours don’t. Five eight-hour shifts is 40 hours a week. Four twelve-hour shifts is 48 hours every eight days, which averages to 42 hours a week. That two-hour gap is the first reason the pay differs.
Both patterns usually pay the same hourly rate. The difference in your payslip comes from hours worked and any premium attached to unsocial shifts. Then tax and National Insurance shrink whatever gross gap is left.
Worked example, both on £13 an hour, no premiums:
So the 4-on-4-off worker earns £1,352 more gross. But that isn’t what lands in the account. Here’s the take-home for each in the 2026/27 tax year, on the standard 1257L tax code:
5-on-2-off on £27,040:
4-on-4-off on £28,392:
The gross gap was £1,352. The take-home gap is about £973. Tax and National Insurance took 28 pence of every extra pound, so the longer-hours pattern wins, but by less than the raw hourly maths suggests. That 28 pence in the pound is the part most people forget when they line up two rotas.
For the plain example above, 4-on-4-off pays more simply because it’s more hours. But the real swing factor is the night premium.
Many 4-on-4-off rotas run two day shifts and two night shifts per cycle, and the night hours carry an enhancement, commonly 20 to 30 percent on top of the base rate. Say your night hours pay a 25 percent premium. On the same £13 base, your night hours are worth £16.25.
Over one eight-day cycle you work 24 day-hours and 24 night-hours:
There are about 45 cycles in a year, which lifts gross pay to roughly £32,000 before the flat-rate version even reaches £28,400. At that point the question of 4 on 4 off vs 5 on 2 off isn’t close: the premium-paying rotating pattern is well ahead on gross. Whether it’s ahead on the take-home you keep depends on whether those extra earnings stay inside the basic-rate band, which I’ll come to.
More gross is not the same as more money you keep, and it’s definitely not the same as a better deal.
First, the higher-rate cliff. The 40 percent band starts at £50,270 in 2026/27. Above that, National Insurance drops to 2 percent but income tax jumps to 40 percent, so every extra pound is worth 58 pence instead of 72 pence. A 4-on-4-off worker piling on overtime or a big night premium can drift into that band, and the take-home reward on the top slice of hours falls sharply. If your gross is heading past £50,270, run the numbers before you agree to extra shifts.
Second, the unpaid-break trap. Some twelve-hour shifts only pay eleven or eleven-and-a-half hours because breaks are unpaid. If that’s your contract, the 42-hours-a-week figure above is too high, and the gross gap narrows or disappears.
Third, the cost of the pattern itself. Four nights a fortnight means more night-time travel, more childcare juggling, and the health toll of rotating shifts. None of that shows up on the payslip, but it’s real. A 5-on-2-off days role on slightly less money can be the better outcome once you price in what the nights cost you.
For the same reasons, a heavily weekend-loaded 5-on-2-off role with a weekend premium can out-earn a flat 4-on-4-off rota. Premiums, not pattern names, decide the winner.
Here’s what I’d check first, in order:
Put both offers side by side as annual take-home, then divide by the hours you’ll actually work. Take the plain £13 example. The 5-on-2-off worker keeps about £22,988 across 2,080 paid hours a year, which is roughly £11.05 of take-home per hour. The 4-on-4-off worker keeps about £23,962 across 2,184 hours, which is about £10.97 per hour. The longer rota pays nearly £1,000 more a year, yet slightly less for each hour you actually spend at work. Neither figure is wrong. They just answer different questions, and the one that matters to you depends on whether you’re optimising for total income or for your time.
There’s one more thing the payslip hides: holiday. On a 4-on-4-off rota your statutory leave is usually calculated in hours rather than days, because your shifts are longer. That doesn’t change your annual pay, but it does mean a “day” of holiday burns twelve hours of your entitlement instead of eight, so plan your time off around hours, not the calendar.
The figures behind this comparison are stable for the 2026/27 tax year. The personal allowance is still £12,570 and is frozen until April 2028. The basic rate is 20 percent, the higher-rate threshold is £50,270, and the main employee National Insurance rate is 8 percent on earnings above £12,570, dropping to 2 percent above £50,270.
What this freeze means in practice: as shift premiums and overtime push your pay up each year, more of it falls into the taxed band, because the thresholds aren’t moving with it. A pay pattern that kept you comfortably in basic rate two years ago can edge you toward the higher-rate cliff today. It’s worth re-checking your annual gross against £50,270 every April, especially if you work a premium-heavy 4-on-4-off rota.
If you want to see the exact take-home for your own rate and hours on either pattern, including night premiums, pension, and student loan, the NetPay app does the full 2026/27 calculation for you. Free to download.
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Usually yes, but mostly because it's more hours. A typical 4-on-4-off rota averages about 42 hours a week on twelve-hour shifts, against 40 on a standard 5-on-2-off pattern, and it often carries night premiums on top. Both normally pay the same base rate, so the difference is hours and premiums, not the pattern itself.
Four twelve-hour shifts is 48 hours every eight days, which averages to about 42 hours a week. Watch for unpaid breaks though: some twelve-hour shifts only pay eleven or eleven-and-a-half hours, which lowers the real weekly figure.
You pay more tax only because you earn more. The rate is the same: 20% income tax and 8% National Insurance on earnings above £12,570 in 2026/27. Together that takes about 28 pence of every extra pound at basic rate, so the take-home gap between the two patterns is smaller than the gross gap.
Financially it usually edges ahead if the hours and premiums are higher, but more money in total can mean less money per hour of your life once you count night travel, childcare, and the toll of rotating shifts. Compare both as annual take-home, then divide by the hours you'll actually work.
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A note on financial advice: NetPay UK calculates take-home pay based on official HMRC tax rules. This article reflects rules in force at the time of publication (24 June 2026). Tax rules change. For complex situations, consult a qualified UK accountant or visit gov.uk/income-tax.
