You repay a percentage of what you earn above a threshold, never a percentage of the whole salary and never a percentage of the balance. What you owe makes no difference to what you pay each month — only your income does.

It is worked out on each pay period separately, so a month you earn more is a month you repay more, and the amount is rounded down to whole pounds. gov.uk's own example takes 9% of £509 — £45.81 — and repays £45.

• Plans 1, 2, 4 and 5 take 9% of income above their own threshold. Plan 4 is the Scottish one.
• A Postgraduate Loan takes 6% above a lower threshold, and it is charged on top of any other plan rather than instead of it. Each is rounded down separately, which is not the same as rounding down the total.

The comparison above is what the same salary would cost on each plan. It is there to make the thresholds legible, not because you get to choose — your plan is set by where and when you studied.

What this does not cover

It does not project when a loan is cleared or written off, and it deliberately ignores interest. Both depend on your balance, your plan's write-off rules and future rates, and a repayment figure is exact where a projection would be a guess dressed up as a number. It assumes you are paid monthly by one employer, in employment rather than through Self Assessment, and that your salary does not change part-way through the year.

Where these rates come from

Every figure above is read from a dated rate file rather than written into the page, and each entry records the gov.uk page it came from. See Repaying your student loan and rates and thresholds for employers on gov.uk.