UK Skilled Worker Visa Points Calculator

The UK Skilled Worker route is points-tested: you need a total of 70 points to be eligible. This calculator adds up the points exactly the way the Home Office does, 50 from three mandatory boxes that cannot be traded off, and 20 from a salary test that has two parts. It is an eligibility indicator, not immigration advice, and it does not replace a formal decision by the Home Office.

For a Sri Lankan applicant the score is only the middle step. First comes the job offer: a licensed UK sponsor has to assign you a certificate of sponsorship. Before you pay any agent or employer for help finding that offer, read how the SLBFE employment contract checker treats foreign contracts. After the score comes the money side: the visa fee, the health surcharge and your savings, which the visa fee calculator for Sri Lankans helps you plan.

The points come from the gov.uk pages “Skilled Worker visa: Your job” and “When you can be paid less”, updated for the statement of changes HC 997 that took effect on 22 July 2025. There are two groups of points.

Mandatory characteristics, 50 points, no alternatives:

• Job offer from a Home Office–licensed sponsor, 20 points.
• Job at the required skill level. From 22 July 2025 that means RQF level 6 (graduate level), unless the occupation is on the Immigration Salary List or the Temporary Shortage List, 20 points.
• English language at the required CEFR level, 10 points. For first-time applicants this became B2 on 8 January 2026 (it was B1 before); B1 is still accepted for people extending a visa they already hold.

If any one of these three is missing, its points are zero and the application cannot reach 70. The tool flags this instead of quietly letting the salary points carry the total. The English box is one you can usually fix: sit an approved test, and use the IELTS band score calculator to see where your four skill scores land before you book. Check that the test you choose is a Home Office approved Secure English Language Test (SELT), because a general test certificate is not accepted.

Salary characteristic, 20 points, earned via one route:

The salary points need both tests to pass for your chosen route: your pay must clear a fixed cash floor and reach a set percentage of the going rate for your occupation code. The going rate is the published 100% market salary for your SOC code (from the gov.uk going-rates list). The routes are:

• General, floor £41,700, 100% of the going rate.
• New entrant (under 26, student, recent graduate, professional training), floor £33,400, 70%.
• Relevant PhD (non-STEM), floor £37,500, 90%.
• Relevant STEM PhD, floor £33,400, 80%.
• Immigration Salary List, floor £33,400, 80%.
• Health & care national pay scale , the numeric going-rate test is replaced by a check that your role sits on the national scale.
• Regulated-profession registration , floor £33,400, 70%.

In formula terms: total = 20·sponsor + 20·skill + 10·english + 20·salaryOK, where salaryOK = salary ≥ floor AND salary ≥ percent × goingRate. Failing either salary test zeroes all 20 salary points. A total of 70 or more is a pass. The calculator computes the sum both by walking the per-characteristic rows and by this direct formula, and the two always agree.

Edge cases the tool handles:

• Exact match passes. Both salary tests use “at least”, so £41,700 against a £41,700 floor and going rate scores the full 20.
• The higher of the two tests wins. A high going rate can make the percentage test the harder one even when the cash floor is cleared easily. The tool shows which test failed and by how much.
• Salary points cannot rescue a missing box. A £60,000 offer without a licensed sponsor still scores 40.
• Pay means basic gross pay. One-off payments such as relocation or housing help are generally not counted towards the floor, so enter the guaranteed annual pay from the certificate of sponsorship, not the full package.
• Part-time pay is not pro-rated. The floor is an annual full-time-equivalent figure, so check the sponsor's stated hours.

What it does not decide: whether your employer really holds a licence, whether your job code is genuinely eligible, and whether your English evidence is accepted. Those come from documents, not from a calculator. If you are comparing several countries, the Australia skilled migration points calculator and the Canada Express Entry CRS calculator run the same kind of test under their own rules, though both are points-ranked systems rather than a fixed 70-point pass mark.

A pass on this page is not the end of the budget. The main costs are the visa application fee (set by length of stay and by whether the role is a health or shortage job), the Immigration Health Surcharge charged for each year of the visa up front, the biometrics and TB test costs in Colombo, and your flight and first month's housing. The sponsor pays its own licence and Immigration Skills Charge, and you should not be asked to repay those. Figures change most years, so take the current numbers from gov.uk and convert them at the live rupee rate.

On timing, gov.uk quotes about three weeks for an application from outside the UK, counted from your biometrics appointment. Plan for the steps before that as well: the employer assigns the certificate of sponsorship, you book a SELT or confirm your degree qualifies as proof of English, and you complete the TB test. Together these often take longer than the decision itself. Students already in the UK who want to switch to this route should also compare their funds position using the UK student visa maintenance funds calculator.

Also keep in mind that UK immigration policy has been moving. The government has consulted on longer routes to settlement and on further changes to skilled routes, so a plan that depends on staying for a set number of years should be re-checked against gov.uk at the time you apply.

• gov.uk: Skilled Worker visa: Your job (mandatory points, 70-point rule)
• gov.uk: Skilled Worker visa: When you can be paid less (routes, floors, %)
• gov.uk: Statement of changes HC 997 (1 July 2025), explanatory memorandum
• gov.uk: Skilled Worker visa: Immigration Salary List
• gov.uk: Going rates for eligible occupation codes

Points, cash floors (£41,700 general, £33,400 lower, £37,500 non-STEM PhD) and going-rate percentages were last cross-checked against these gov.uk sources on 2026-07-16. Home Office thresholds change with each statement of changes, confirm current figures on gov.uk before you apply.