UIF calculator
See what UIF would pay you if you lost your job or went on maternity leave, and what it costs you each month.
UIF takes 1% of your salary every month, and your employer adds another 1%. In return, the Unemployment Insurance Fund pays part of your salary if you lose your job, are too ill to work for a week or more, or go on maternity leave. How much depends on what you earned and how long you worked. This calculator uses the formula in the Unemployment Insurance Act, so the figures follow the rules the Fund pays by.
Employ people?
Govchain Payroll works out UIF on every payslip, files the EMP201 with SARS and declares your staff to the Fund, from R400 a month.
How the UIF payout is worked out
The Fund first turns your salary into a daily income: monthly pay × 12 ÷ 365, counting pay only up to R 17 712 a month. It then multiplies that by your income replacement rate. The rate slides from 60% for the lowest earners down to 38% at R 17 712, so someone on a low wage gets a bigger share of it back than someone near the ceiling. Here is what that pays each month at a few salaries:
| Salary | Rate | Out of work | Maternity |
|---|---|---|---|
| R 4 000 | 48.9% | R 1 955 | R 2 640 |
| R 8 000 | 43.7% | R 3 493 | R 5 280 |
| R 12 000 | 40.6% | R 4 876 | R 7 920 |
| R 15 000 | 39.1% | R 5 862 | R 9 900 |
| R 17 712 or more | 38.0% | R 6 731 | R 11 690 |
The bottom row is the most UIF pays anyone: R 6 731 a month for unemployment and R 11 690 for maternity. Earning more than R 17 712 doesn’t raise it.
How long it pays depends on your credit days. You earn one day for every five days you worked while paying UIF, counted over the four years before your job ended. Four unbroken years give 292 days, a little under ten months. The Act caps credits at 365 days, but at one day in five, four years of work can’t reach it. The first 238 days are paid at your replacement rate and any days after that at 20% of your daily income. If you claimed in the same four years, the Fund takes off the days it already paid.
Take someone on R 15 000 a month who worked the full four years. Their daily income is R 493,15 and their rate 39.1%, so UIF pays R 192,73 a day, about R 5 862 a month, for 238 days. The last 54 days pay R 98,63 a day. That comes to R 51 196 in all.
Who can claim unemployment benefit
The job has to have ended because your employer ended it, a fixed-term contract ran out, you were dismissed, or the employer went insolvent. If you resigned, you can’t claim. You also need to have been out of work for more than 14 days and registered as a work-seeker at a labour centre, and you have 12 months from the end of the job to apply.
Illness benefit is paid at the same rate and comes out of the same credit days. It applies once you have been too ill to work for at least seven days.
Maternity benefit
Maternity benefit is a flat 66% of daily income, not the sliding rate, with the same R 17 712 cap. It runs for up to 17.32 weeks, which is 121 days. You need to have been employed for at least 13 weeks before you apply, and you can apply before or after the birth, up to 12 months after it. Maternity benefit doesn’t use up the credit days you have built for unemployment.
If your employer pays part of your salary while you are on leave, UIF pays less, and the two together can’t come to more than your normal pay. The law only guarantees the leave, not pay for it, so the calculator assumes your employer pays nothing while you are away.
In October 2025 the Constitutional Court ruled that parents can share four months and ten days of leave between them. It left the UIF rules alone until Parliament amends the Act, so for now the Fund still pays maternity benefit to the mother who gave birth, and 10 days of parental benefit to the other parent.
What comes off a salary
You pay 1% of your salary and your employer pays another 1% on top, both charged on pay up to R 17 712 a month, the ceiling SARS has applied since 1 June 2021. So the most you pay is R 177,12 a month and the Fund gets at most R 354,24 for one person. Anyone who works 24 hours a month or more for an employer is covered, apart from members of Parliament, ministers, MECs, provincial legislators and municipal councillors. Employers registered for PAYE pay both halves to SARS with the EMP201 and declare their staff to the Fund on the UI-19. The PAYE calculator shows UIF next to the tax on a payslip.
Common questions
Can I claim UIF if my hours were cut but I still have a job?
What if my employer never declared me to the Fund?
Is UIF the same as COIDA?
This calculator is a guide. It applies sections 12, 13, 16, 20 and 24 and Schedule 2 of the Unemployment Insurance Act 63 of 2001, as amended in 2016, and the contribution ceiling on SARS’s UIF page. The Fund works from the earnings and dates your employers declared, so its figures can differ. Figures verified 19 September 2026.