Supermarket pay UK 2026 compared: what Tesco, Sainsbury's, Asda and M&S actually pay store staff per hour, plus what that means for your take-home.
Every spring the supermarkets announce their new hourly rates within a few weeks of each other, and every year the same question comes up on shift: who actually pays the most? The honest answer is that supermarket pay UK rates cluster far closer together than the press releases suggest, and the headline figure isn’t the number that lands in your bank account anyway.
So here’s the real picture for 2026. What Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda and M&S pay store staff per hour, where London changes things, and what any of it means once income tax and National Insurance come out.
These are the 2026 base rates for store and customer assistants at the four grocers, set in the spring pay round.
For context, the National Living Wage for anyone aged 21 and over is £12.71 an hour from April 2026. So M&S sits at the top of the national pile, Tesco and Sainsbury’s are within a few pence of each other just behind, and Asda started the year at the legal floor before its July uplift pulled it back in line.
The spread from top to bottom on the national rate is about 31p an hour. Over a 35-hour week that’s roughly £11, or £565 a year before tax. Real, but smaller than the “who pays most” headlines imply.
Here’s what I’d check before I chased an extra 20p an hour across the car park to a rival store.
Two things move your actual pay far more than the base rate: how many hours you’re contracted for, and what comes out in tax. A £13.41 rate on a 16-hour contract is a smaller wage than £13.10 on 35 hours. If you’re comparing jobs, compare the weekly or monthly figure the contract gives you, not the rate on the poster.
Then there’s take-home. The rate is your gross pay. What reaches your account is gross minus income tax, minus National Insurance, minus any pension contribution and student loan. Two people on the exact same supermarket wage can take home different amounts depending on their tax code and whether they’ve opted into the workplace pension.
Let’s run the numbers on a common setup. Say you’re on Tesco’s national rate of £13.28 an hour, working 35 hours a week, on the standard tax code 1257L.
That’s roughly £1,743 a month in your pocket. If you’re auto-enrolled in the workplace pension, a further 5% of your qualifying earnings comes off before you see it, so budget for the take-home to be a little lower again, with your employer topping the pension up on your behalf.
The point of the worked example is this: the difference between £13.10 and £13.41 an hour is real but small once tax has taken its share. The pension match, the colleague discount, and the number of guaranteed hours usually matter more to your year than the pay-rate league table does.
If you work inside the M25, the picture shifts. Every one of the four grocers pays a London premium, and it’s a bigger gap than the national differences between them.
Tesco jumps to £14.55, Sainsbury’s to £14.54, M&S to £14.74, and Asda to £14.35 after its July uplift. That’s well over a pound an hour above the national rates, which reflects the higher cost of living rather than any grand generosity. On a 35-hour week, the London rate at M&S works out around £2,000 a year more in gross pay than the same job outside the M25.
Worth knowing if you’re near the boundary: the premium is tied to the store’s location, not where you live. A store just inside the M25 pays the London rate to everyone who works there, whatever their postcode.
Because the national rates now sit so close together, the benefits attached to each job do more to separate them than the pay does.
Colleague discount is the obvious one. A 10% discount on your own weekly food shop is worth real money if you spend £80 a week there, close to £400 a year back in your pocket, and it’s paid out of money you were spending anyway. Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda and M&S all run a staff discount scheme, though the percentage and the conditions differ, and some raise the rate at Christmas.
Then there’s the pension. Every supermarket auto-enrols you, and the employer contribution is effectively extra pay you don’t see on your payslip. Skipping the pension to get slightly more cash now means turning down that employer money, which is rarely a good trade unless you genuinely can’t afford the contribution.
Paid breaks, guaranteed hours, sick pay above the statutory minimum, and share-save schemes all vary too. None of it shows up in the hourly rate, but all of it changes what the job is worth over a year. When two rates are within 30p of each other, this is where the real decision sits.
Chasing the top rate makes sense when the gap is genuine and the hours match. Moving from Asda’s spring floor of £12.71 to M&S at £13.41 for the same contracted hours is 70p an hour, close to £1,300 a year before tax on full-time hours. That’s a real raise and worth the effort.
It’s usually not worth it when the “better” rate comes with fewer guaranteed hours, an awkward commute, or the loss of a discount or benefit you actually use. A staff discount on a weekly shop, subsidised meals, or a better rota can quietly be worth more than a few pence on the rate. Add it all up before you hand your notice in.
And if you’re under 21, check the rate for your age band rather than assuming the headline number applies. The National Living Wage floor is lower for under-21s, though most supermarkets pay a single rate regardless of age, which can make them a better bet than sectors that pay the legal minimum for your age.
The big change this year was the National Living Wage rising to £12.71 an hour in April 2026. That lifted the legal floor and pushed every supermarket to move its own rates up to stay above it, which is why Asda’s £12.71 starting point looked so tight before the July increase.
What didn’t change is the shape of the deductions. The personal allowance is still frozen at £12,570, income tax is still 20% in the basic-rate band, and employee National Insurance is still 8% on earnings above the threshold. So a pay rise this spring lands almost entirely in the basic-rate zone, meaning you keep roughly 72p of every extra pound after tax and NI, a little less once pension comes off.
The other quiet shift is how close the grocers now sit. A few years ago there were real gaps between them. In 2026 the big four national rates fit inside a 31p band, so the deciding factors are increasingly hours, benefits and location rather than the raw pay rate.
If you want to see exactly what your supermarket wage leaves you after tax, National Insurance, pension and student loan, at your hours and your rate, the NetPay app does the sum for you. Free to download.
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Among the big grocers, M&S sits at the top of the national rate at £13.41 an hour for customer assistants, just ahead of Tesco at £13.28 and Sainsbury's at £13.23. Asda's national rate reaches £13.10 from July 2026. All four pay noticeably more inside the M25, where London rates run above £14 an hour.
Tesco's national rate for store colleagues is £13.28 an hour from late March 2026, rising to £14.55 an hour for staff working inside the M25. That's roughly 57p above the National Living Wage of £12.71, and it comes with extras like a colleague discount and a pension.
Yes. The National Living Wage for workers aged 21 and over is £12.71 an hour from April 2026, and every major supermarket now pays its store staff above that floor. The gap is small on paper, often 40p to 70p an hour, but the benefits packages, discounts and paid breaks are where the bigger differences show up.
On a rate around £13.28 an hour for 35 hours a week, you'd earn roughly £24,170 a year before deductions. After income tax and National Insurance, that leaves about £20,920 a year, or around £1,743 a month. Pension contributions and any student loan would reduce it a little further.
Want to see your actual take-home pay?
NetPay UK works out your real net pay after tax, NI, pension and salary sacrifice, for hourly, shift and variable-income workers. Free to download.
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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 (9 July 2026). Tax rules change. For complex situations, consult a qualified UK accountant or visit gov.uk/income-tax.
