AAT Salary Guide 2026: What You Can Earn with an AAT Qualification

What you earn with AAT depends on your level, your role, your employer and where you work, and the honest answer is a range rather than a single number. This guide uses figures from AAT's own Salary Survey 2025, the National Careers Service and Payscale, and it names the source next to each number. Where we could not confirm a figure from a named source, we have left it out. For background on the qualification itself, read what AAT is.

What AAT members earn: the 2025 salary survey

AAT publishes a regular salary survey of its members. The 2025 edition reports median pay by stage, and it is the best single guide to what AAT-qualified people earn.

The same survey gives median bonuses of £1,250 for MAATs and £2,500 for FMAATs. A median is the middle value, so half of respondents earn more and half earn less. The AAT pages we read show no publication date, so treat the figures as the 2025 survey results. If you are weighing up membership, our guide to MAAT and FMAAT explains the grades.

Earlier survey figures for students and Level 3

AAT's 2023 survey, reported in AAT magazine in early 2024, put the average salary of AAT members at £36,000 and that of students at £25,000. The same article said that Level 3 AAT Qualified Bookkeepers, a membership grade, earned 11 percent more than those who had not joined, at an average of £27,800. These are older numbers than the 2025 table, so use them for context rather than as today's pay. We could not read the 2025 student and Level 2 or Level 3 charts, so we do not quote a 2025 student figure.

Salaries by job role

The National Careers Service publishes average salary ranges for the jobs AAT students and members commonly do. Its pages give a starter figure and an experienced figure, and they do not show a date.

Payscale, which collects salaries reported by employees, gives a second view. Its UK pages show an average of £23,730 for an accounts assistant (261 profiles, updated 7 July 2026), £26,948 for an assistant accountant (171 profiles, updated 20 March 2026) and £38,560 for a management accountant (291 profiles, updated 19 May 2026). Payscale ranges are based on self-reported data from a limited number of people, so use them as a cross-check and not as a promise.

What affects your salary

Role matters most. A payroll or bookkeeping job and a management accounting job can sit many thousands of pounds apart even at the same AAT level. Location matters too, because London employers generally pay more, although we did not find a verified UK-wide percentage to quote. Sector, employer size and whether you manage people all move the figure, and so does the step from Level 4 to membership, which the survey shows as a jump from £28,750 to £38,188 at the median.

Apprentice pay

If you take the apprenticeship route, the legal minimum depends on your age and year. From 1 April 2026, GOV.UK lists the apprentice minimum wage at £8.00 an hour, and the national minimum wage at £10.85 an hour for ages 18 to 20 and £12.71 for those aged 21 and over. Apprentices aged 19 or over who are past their first year are paid at the national minimum wage for their age group at least, and many employers pay more. Read our overview of accountancy apprenticeships for how the route works.

How to increase what you earn

The survey figures suggest three levers. Finish Level 4 and move into membership, since the median rises from £28,750 to £38,188. Build experience in a role with a clear progression path, such as assistant accountant to management accountant. And decide whether a chartered qualification fits your goals: AAT can lead to exemptions, as in AAT exemptions for ACCA, and our comparison AAT vs ACCA sets out the trade-offs. You can start with our AAT courses, and if you are unsure about the workload, see how hard AAT is.

What we could not confirm

We did not use salary-site pages that were out of date or did not name a date, and we did not use London-only recruiter tables because we could not check how their rows lined up. AAT's own pages disagree about pay after completing an apprenticeship, quoting around £24,500 on one page and around £28,750 on another, so we have not repeated either. Official pay data from the Office for National Statistics was not available in a form we could check. Figures change every year, so check the source pages below before you rely on them.

Frequently asked questions

How much does an AAT qualified person earn?

The AAT Salary Survey 2025 reports a median of £38,188 for MAATs and £50,000 for FMAATs.

What is a typical AAT starting salary?

The National Careers Service gives £24,000 as a starter figure for an accounting technician or bookkeeper.

Do AAT members earn more than students?

The survey shows pay rising at each stage, from a Level 4 median of £28,750 to £38,188 for MAATs.

Is AAT worth it for salary?

The figures above suggest membership brings a clear step up, though your role and employer matter as much as the qualification.

Sources: AAT Salary Survey 2025 (aat.org.uk), National Careers Service job profiles (nationalcareers.service.gov.uk), Payscale UK salary pages (payscale.com) and GOV.UK national minimum wage rates, checked October 2026.