Advanced options
Guarantee Credit tops weekly income up to the standard minimum. The first GBP 10,000 of savings is ignored; each GBP 500 above adds GBP 1/week of assumed income. Carers, severe disability and housing costs add higher amounts, and income like Attendance Allowance and PIP is disregarded, so many people qualify above the headline level: this is an estimate, always check properly. Claiming also unlocks Winter Fuel Payment, Housing Benefit, Council Tax and NHS help.
What The Pension Credit Calculator Works Out
- Estimated Pension Credit: Guarantee Credit lifts weekly income to the standard minimum guarantee, GBP 238.00 a week for a single person and GBP 363.25 for a couple in 2026/27, so the award is the guarantee level minus your counted income. The DWP's own estimates put unclaimed entitlement in the high hundreds of millions to billions a year, with close to a million eligible households missing out.
- Income counted: your weekly income plus tariff income from savings. The home you live in is ignored entirely, and only savings above GBP 10,000 count, at GBP 1 a week for every GBP 500 (or part), so GBP 20,000 in savings adds just GBP 20 a week of assumed income.
- Guarantee level: the standard minimum guarantee for your household, plus any additions you select in the advanced options. "My income's above the limit" is so often wrong because the additions raise the limit.
- Disability benefits included in that income (advanced): Attendance Allowance, PIP and DLA are disregarded, so if your weekly income figure includes them they are taken back out, while at the same time unlocking the severe disability addition. A pensioner "over the limit" often qualifies handsomely once Attendance Allowance is claimed first.
- Carer addition (advanced): adds about GBP 48.15 a week to your guarantee level if you get Carer's Allowance or have an underlying entitlement to it (for example because your State Pension overlaps it).
- Severe disability addition (advanced): adds about GBP 86.05 a week if you get Attendance Allowance or PIP daily living, live alone (or everyone in the home qualifies) and nobody receives Carer's Allowance for looking after you.
- Backdated first payment (advanced): claims can be backdated up to 3 months if you qualified throughout, so the first payment can be a 13-week lump sum.
- Winter Fuel Payment (advanced): Pension Credit is the passport to the GBP 200 payment per household each winter, GBP 300 where someone is 80 or over, along with the Warm Home Discount, Cold Weather Payments, free NHS dental and optical help and the over-75 TV licence.
- Passported help per year (advanced): Guarantee Credit normally brings full Housing Benefit for renters and full Council Tax Reduction, so enter your rent and Council Tax to see why the passport is often worth more than the payment itself and why campaigns urge claiming even GBP 1 a week. Savings Credit, the legacy second strand for those who reached pension age before April 2016, adds up to about GBP 18 to GBP 20 a week for that shrinking group and is not modelled here.
Check properly: GOV.UK: Pension Credit.