If you are working in the UK on a Student visa, the headline rule is simple: up to 20 hours per week during term time if your course is at degree level or above, 10 hours per week if it is below degree level, and full-time during official vacations. Self-employment, professional sports, and permanent full-time roles are off-limits at any hour count. Break these conditions and your visa can be cut short.
The details are where students get caught out, so it is worth going through them properly.
How Many Hours You Can Work
Your work rights depend on two things: the level of your course and whether your sponsor is an approved provider. Paragraph ST 26.1 of Appendix Student sets three tiers:
- Degree level or above at an approved provider: up to 20 hours per week in term time, full-time in vacations. The same applies if an overseas university sponsors you for a short-term study-abroad programme in the UK.
- Below degree level at an approved provider: up to 10 hours per week in term time, full-time in vacations.
- Any other study, including part-time courses: no work permitted.
“Approved provider” status is granted by the Home Office and can be revoked. If your institution loses it during your course, your work rights can disappear with it.
Short-term study visa holders cannot work at all, paid or unpaid. You also need to be at least 16 before any work permission applies.1GOV.UK. Student Visa: Overview
What Counts as Term Time
The weekly cap only bites during term time. Full-time work is allowed in vacations with no weekly ceiling.2GOV.UK. Immigration Rules Appendix Student
Your institution decides what term time means, and it is not just the weeks when lectures are scheduled. It covers any period you are expected to be actively studying, completing coursework, or sitting assessments. A postgraduate taught student writing a dissertation over the summer is in term time, and the 20-hour cap still applies. Lectures ending is not the same as term ending.
PhD and other research students face the tightest version of this. Most doctoral programmes treat the whole year as continuous term time with no default vacation. You get unlimited hours only during a specific block of annual leave granted in writing by your supervisor, or once you have submitted your final thesis and all corrections have been approved. Everything else counts as term time and is capped at 20 hours.
One more point students routinely miss: the cap applies across all your jobs added together. Twelve hours in a café plus ten in a library is 22 hours, which is a breach even though neither job on its own would be.
Types of Work You Cannot Do
Some work is prohibited regardless of your hours or course level. Under paragraph ST 26.5 of Appendix Student, you cannot:
- Be self-employed, freelance, run a business, or register as a sole trader.
- Work as a professional sportsperson, including as a sports coach.
- Work as an entertainer.
- Fill a permanent full-time vacancy. The role must be genuinely part-time or temporary; an employer slotting you into what is effectively a permanent post with reduced hours on paper still breaches the rules.2GOV.UK. Immigration Rules Appendix Student
Doctors and dentists in training sit in a separate category. Unless you are on an approved foundation programme, clinical training placements may not count as permitted work. Check with your institution’s international student team before accepting any clinical role.
Volunteering Versus Unpaid Work
This is one of the most misunderstood rules. Genuine volunteering does not count toward your weekly hours. Unpaid work does.
To qualify as volunteering, there must be no contract, you must not be replacing a paid employee, and you cannot receive payment beyond reasonable travel or meal expenses. If any of those conditions slip, the activity becomes unpaid employment and counts against your weekly cap. If your visa does not permit work at all, unpaid employment breaches your conditions just as a paid job would.
Proving Your Right to Work
Every UK employer has to check your right to work before your first day. Knowing what they need in advance keeps a job offer from stalling.
The system has moved to digital status. If you arrived recently, you almost certainly have an eVisa rather than a physical Biometric Residence Permit. Log in to your UK Visas and Immigration account to view it. Almost all physical BRPs expired on or before 31 December 2024, though an unexpired BRP can still be used to generate a share code for right-to-work checks for up to 18 months beyond its expiry date.3UK Parliament. Replacement of UK Residence Permits With eVisas
The standard way to prove your status is to generate a share code on GOV.UK, give it to your employer, and let them run it through the government’s checking service. The service shows your immigration status and any work restrictions.4GOV.UK. Prove Your Right to Work to an Employer Employers can no longer accept a Biometric Residence Card or Permit as a standalone document, so if they ask for a share code, that is the current legal requirement.5GOV.UK. Checking a Job Applicant’s Right to Work
Pay, Tax, and National Insurance
Working in the UK puts you in the UK tax system, however few hours you do.
You need a National Insurance number for your employer to process pay correctly. Check first whether you already have one printed on the back of your BRP or shown in your UKVI account. If not, you can apply online from inside the UK if you have the right to work and are either working, looking for work, or holding a job offer. The process takes up to four weeks.6GOV.UK. Apply for a National Insurance Number You can legally start work before the number arrives, though your employer may put you on an emergency tax code, which can lead to overpaying tax that you reclaim later.
The standard personal allowance is £12,570 a year, so earnings below that are not taxed. Most students working within the weekly cap stay under this. Above it, income tax applies at the standard rates.7GOV.UK. Income Tax Rates and Personal Allowances Whether your UK earnings are taxed may also turn on any double-taxation agreement between the UK and your home country.8GOV.UK. Tax on Foreign Income: If You Come to Study in the UK
Class 1 National Insurance contributions start once your earnings exceed £242 per week for the 2026–27 tax year. Most students on typical student-job wages stay near or below that line during term time, but vacation full-time hours can push you over.
You are entitled to at least the National Minimum Wage regardless of your visa. From April 2026, the rates are £12.71 an hour if you are 21 or over and £10.85 an hour if you are aged 18 to 20.9GOV.UK. National Minimum Wage and National Living Wage Rates Any employer paying less is breaking the law, and you can report it to HMRC without it affecting your visa.
What Happens If You Break the Rules
The Home Office treats work-condition breaches seriously. Consequences can include:
- Curtailment: your permission to stay can be shortened or cancelled, potentially with immediate effect.
- Refusal of future applications: a previous breach is weighed when you apply for any later UK visa, including the Graduate visa. Evidence that you deliberately intended to work beyond your conditions makes refusal more likely.
- Removal from the UK in serious cases.
Caseworkers consider how and why the breach happened, how long ago, and whether you were granted further permission after it was known.10GOV.UK. Suitability: Previous Breach of UK Immigration Laws Even a small overshoot that seems harmless at the time can surface years later when you apply for a Skilled Worker visa or settlement.
After You Finish Your Course
Once your course ends, the Student visa work rules stop applying if you switch to the Graduate visa. This route is unsponsored, so you do not need an employer to back your application. It gives you two years in the UK after a bachelor’s or master’s, or three years after a PhD or other doctoral qualification. You can work full-time, take any job, and be self-employed. The one prohibition that carries over is professional sport.11GOV.UK. Graduate Visa
You have to apply before your Student visa expires. Miss that deadline and you have to leave the UK and reapply from abroad.