How much pocket money by age — UK

Updated 2026-08-06

Children aged 7 to 18 in the UK received an average of £9.90 a week in early 2026, according to anonymised data from more than 600,000 children using the gohenry app, covering 1 January to 15 April 2026 and reported by the PA news agency on 8 June 2026. By single year of age that runs from £4.30 a week at seven to a peak of £18.61 at seventeen, then falls back to £16.57 at eighteen. The old rule of a pound per year of age sits above those recorded figures at every age below thirteen — £10 a week for a ten-year-old against £5.38 actually paid — so treat the rule as a ceiling rather than a target.

One caveat worth taking seriously before you use any of this at the kitchen table: these are amounts paid by families who already subscribe to a children’s money app, not a national average, and they are means rather than medians, so a minority of large payments pulls them upward. The regional spread in the same dataset runs from £8.57 a week in the East of England to £12.88 in the South East, which is a bigger gap than most of the age steps. Use the figures to sanity-check what you already had in mind, not to decide it.

Average weekly pocket money by age, UK

gohenry’s recorded averages for 1 January to 15 April 2026, from a sample of more than 600,000 children aged 7 to 18, as reported by PA on 8 June 2026. These are amounts families pay, not amounts anyone recommends. The pound-per-year column is a rule of thumb with no research behind it, shown for comparison.
Age	gohenry 2026 average, per week	Pound-per-year rule of thumb	What tends to change here
7	£4.30	£7	Primary school. The money is countable and the point is that it turns up at all, not what it buys.
8	£4.44	£8	Waiting a fortnight for something becomes possible. First real saving decisions.
9	£4.78	£9	Prices start to mean something. A goal two or three weeks out is realistic.
10	£5.38	£10	Spending starts happening out of your sight — the shop on the way home.
11	£6.46	£11	Secondary school, and with it a bank account becomes possible for the first time. A visible step up in the data.
12	£8.12	£12	Good moment to move from weekly to monthly. Making it last is now the skill.
13	£10.68	£13	Social spending arrives, and with it the first genuine budgeting problem.
14	£12.86	£14	Bigger one-off wants. Saving over a month or two rather than a fortnight.
15	£14.54	£15	Part-time work becomes legal in most of Great Britain at 13 and common by now.
16	£16.66	£16	Pocket money starts acting as a floor under earnings rather than as the income.
17	£18.61	£17	The peak. Close to a running-costs conversation: travel, phone, going out.
18	£16.57	£18	Falls back, because many eighteen-year-olds are earning and the payment is topping up rather than funding.

What these figures do and do not tell you

The gohenry sample is large and it comes from recorded transfers rather than from parents remembering what they gave, which makes it far more reliable than most pocket money surveys. What it cannot be is representative. Every family in it pays a monthly subscription for a children’s debit card, which selects for households already spending money on the problem.

The year-on-year movement is worth more than the level. Pocket money rose 1.2% on the same period in 2025, from £9.78 to £9.90 — less than half the 2.8% consumer prices index rate recorded in April 2026, so in real terms children took a small pay cut. Children in the sample saved an average of £3.93 a week, roughly 40% of what they received.

There is also almost no gender gap in the data: £9.91 a week for boys against £9.89 for girls, a difference of two pence. That is worth knowing mainly because the opposite gets asserted so often.

Paying per chore, or a fixed weekly amount

This is the decision that actually matters, and the honest answer is that both models work as long as you pick one deliberately. A fixed weekly amount treats pocket money as a training budget: the child gets it because they are a member of the household and need practice handling money, and chores are a separate expectation with no price on them. Paying per chore treats it as wages, which makes the link between effort and money vivid.

The argument against paying for everything is the overjustification effect — the finding that attaching payment to an activity a child was already willing to do can reduce their willingness to do it for free later, and that withdrawing the payment leaves them less inclined to act than if they had never been paid. It is a real and replicated effect, though the research is broader than household chores specifically, and you should treat it as a reason for care rather than as proof of anything about your own kitchen.

Most published guidance lands in the same place: ordinary family tasks — your own plate, your own bed, your own room — are unpaid because everyone does them, while genuinely extra jobs beyond the usual can earn money on top of a small fixed amount. That hybrid is also what a reward chart tends to become in practice once the novelty of the stickers wears off.

Whichever you choose, fix the day and stop renegotiating. A payment that arrives when someone remembers teaches only that money comes from asking, and a weekly renegotiation is a weekly argument you have volunteered for.

Four things that matter more than the amount

Same day, every week — Friday after tea, Saturday morning, whatever fits. Predictability is the entire mechanism.
Weekly until about twelve, then monthly — A month is further away than a nine-year-old can plan across. Nibud, the Dutch guideline body, makes the cut in the same place: weekly through primary school, monthly from secondary.
Split it before it is spent — A share set aside for a named goal and the rest free to waste. Splitting after the fact never actually happens.
Let them buy the rubbish thing — The £5 mistake at nine is the cheapest financial lesson on the market. Rescuing them removes the only consequence in the system.

The no-card option, for children too young for one

Below a certain age the card products simply are not available. gohenry starts at six (Finder UK, March 2026). Bank-issued current accounts with a debit card start later still: Nationwide’s FlexOne is for 11- to 17-year-olds, and Santander’s 123 Mini only lets the child pay for things themselves from eleven. So a five-year-old has no card option at all, and a six- to ten-year-old has one only by paying a monthly subscription for a prepaid card that the child may barely use.

The alternative that has always worked is a pot on the shelf and a note of what is owed. The weak point is never the money, it is the bookkeeping: who paid, what was already spent, and how much is left towards the bike. Those questions get answered from memory, badly, and usually mid-argument.

KlusQuest keeps that ledger instead of a card. Pocket money lands in a virtual pot the moment you approve the job, the child watches it count up towards a savings goal they picked, and there is no bank link, no card and no transfer — nothing is skimmed on the way anywhere, because the money never goes anywhere. Handing over the actual cash stays a family matter, on your terms, exactly as you do it now.

It also splits the two payment models rather than making you choose between them: everyday tasks earn points because they are part of being in the family, while extra jobs earn pocket money towards the goal. It is an iPhone and iPad app for families with children aged 7 to 18, free for one child with nothing held back, and KlusQuest Pro adds multiple children and photo proof.

Common questions

How much pocket money should a 10-year-old get in the UK?

gohenry’s recorded average for ten-year-olds in early 2026 is £5.38 a week. The pound-per-year rule would give £10. Anywhere between the two is defensible, and paying it on the same day every week matters more than where in the range you land.

What age should pocket money start?

Once a child can count coins and wait a few days for something, which is usually around six or seven. gohenry’s own data starts at seven, and Nibud points to six for the same reason: that is when children reliably recognise what the coins are worth.

Weekly or monthly?

Weekly through primary school, because a month is too far away for a young child to plan across. Monthly from around twelve or thirteen, when making the money last becomes the actual skill being learned. gohenry’s data shows the biggest single jump between eleven and twelve, which is roughly where that switch belongs.

Should pocket money be tied to chores?

Both models have serious defenders. The pattern most guidance converges on is a hybrid: ordinary household tasks are unpaid because they are part of family membership, while extra jobs beyond the usual can earn money. What matters is picking one and being consistent.

What if we cannot afford these amounts?

Pay less. The published figures describe what some families pay, not a standard, and the strongest evidence in this area is about regularity rather than size — Whitebread and Bingham’s 2013 Cambridge report for the Money Advice Service found that money habits are largely formed by around age seven through repeated ordinary experience. A pound that always arrives beats five that sometimes do.

Do I need a bank account or a debit card to do this?

No, and under eleven you mostly cannot have one anyway. A virtual pot tracks what is owed and what is saved without any account, card or transfer, which is what makes it workable for a seven-year-old. That is how KlusQuest runs it: no bank link, and the payout stays inside the family.