Best-Paid UK Tech Cities Outside London (November 2026)
Of the UK cities with at least 10 salaried tech ads, Glasgow has the highest median advertised salary outside London at £65k, ahead of Newcastle (£60k) and Cambridge (£59k). London itself sits at £75k. The figures are from live ads on salaryshown.com on 6 November 2026 (4,114 open roles, 2,540 with a salary).
Most of these city samples are small, and nearly all are made up of agency ads. Read the ranking as a snapshot of what is advertised now, not a settled order.
How we counted
Each ad carries a location. We grouped ads by the city named in it and left out the 1,770 roles that only say "UK" with no city. We then took the median advertised salary for every city with at least 10 ads showing a salary. We took the city split ourselves from the location text on each ad, so it is not published on the site as a ready-made page.
Across all 1,912 salaried ads outside London the median advertised salary is £50k. For the 426 of those that name a city, it is also £50k.
Median advertised salary by city
| City | Open roles | Ads with a salary | Median advertised salary | Agency ads with a salary |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| London (for comparison) | 1,760 | 628 | £75,000 | 436 |
| Glasgow | 15 | 10 | £65,000 | 10 |
| Newcastle | 33 | 27 | £60,000 | 27 |
| Cambridge | 40 | 28 | £59,000 | 10 |
| Manchester | 111 | 98 | £56,250 | 95 |
| Reading | 21 | 18 | £55,000 | 16 |
| Bristol | 96 | 38 | £50,000 | 27 |
| Sheffield | 16 | 13 | £49,000 | 11 |
| Nottingham | 15 | 15 | £48,000 | 15 |
| Liverpool | 14 | 12 | £47,500 | 11 |
| Oxford | 34 | 18 | £47,060 | 16 |
| Cardiff | 18 | 16 | £47,000 | 16 |
| Birmingham | 68 | 62 | £45,000 | 51 |
| Edinburgh | 20 | 11 | £45,000 | 8 |
| Brighton | 14 | 11 | £33,000 | 9 |
Figures taken on 6 November 2026. Cities with fewer than 10 salaried ads (Guildford, Dundee, Belfast, York, Bath) are left out.
Read the small samples carefully
Glasgow's £65k rests on 10 ads, all from agencies. Newcastle's £60k is 27 ads, again all agency. A handful of senior roles can move a median that size by several thousand pounds. Only Manchester (98 ads), Birmingham (62) and Bristol (38) have enough salaried ads to be steadier, and at about £56k, £45k and £50k they sit below the top of the table.
Cambridge is the one city in the top three where startups account for more of the priced ads than agencies do: 17 of its 28 salaried ads come from startups we track. Bristol has 7 startup ads, Leeds 2, and Edinburgh 1.
Why the table is mostly agency pay
Outside London, 1,327 of the 1,486 salaried "UK" ads and 95 of Manchester's 98 come from agencies, which only appear on SalaryShown when they state a salary. Only 17.5% of startup ads and 29.2% of direct-employer ads show a salary (see the link below), so in most cities employer roles are thin in this table. A city's median therefore describes the agency ads that show pay, not every job there.
What to do with this
If you are weighing a move, use the median as a rough guide only, then check the roles in your field:
- Compare your own role against the UK-wide range on its salary page or any other role page listed in the salary guides.
- Browse every priced role outside the capital on the tech jobs outside London page, and compare with tech jobs in London.
- See the market-wide figures on the insights dashboard.
For how pay differs by work pattern, read Remote vs Office Tech Pay in the UK. For the other side of the picture, which UK tech employers show the salary explains why so many city ads carry no figure at all.
Where the figures came from
All counts and medians come from the live job list at salaryshown.com on 6 November 2026. We counted ads by the city in the location text and took the median of each ad's advertised annual salary (the `a` value in jobs.json) for each city.