Twenty hours a week is the line for most degree students, and the Home Office does not round down. Here is exactly where the line sits, what counts towards it, what you must be paid, and how to say no to the extra shift without losing the job or the visa.
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Most international students on a UK Student visa can work up to 20 hours a week in term time if their course is at degree level or above, and 10 hours if it is below degree level. During official vacations they can work full time. A week means any seven-day period starting on a Monday, and hours cannot be averaged.
That is the short version. Now the parts people get wrong. A week is not whatever your rota says it is: the Home Office counts any seven-day period starting on a Monday. You cannot average across a month. Twenty-one hours one week and twelve the next is still a breach, even though the average looks fine.
The cap also follows you, not the job. Two jobs at twelve hours each is twenty-four hours, and that is a breach even though neither employer sees a problem.
During official vacations, the ones printed in your university calendar, you can work full time. So can most students in the gap before the course starts and after it formally ends, while the visa is still valid. PhD students, note: research programmes usually run all year, so your vacation is the annual leave your department agrees, not the undergraduate summer. Check with your supervisor before you assume anything.
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The list of what you can do is long.
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The banned list is short, specific and worth memorising, because every item on it is banned outright, not capped. The Deliveroo question comes up every single week, so here is the straight answer: rider and courier apps sign you on as a self-employed contractor, and self-employment is banned on a Student visa. It does not matter that your flatmate does it. It does not matter that you stay under twenty hours. The same logic catches Fiverr gigs, paid Instagram promotions, and private tuition you invoice for yourself.
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Your visa limits your hours. It does not discount your pay. The National Minimum Wage applies to you in full, exactly as it does to the British student on the next till. From 1 April 2026 the rates are below. If you are 22 and offered £11 an hour cash in hand, that is not a starter rate, it is illegal. And cash in hand should worry you for a second reason: no payslip means no proof you stayed under your cap.
Keep every payslip. Check the hours on it against your own record each week, because you, not your employer, carry the visa consequences if the numbers creep. Your payslip should show your hours or pay, tax, National Insurance and your NI number. If any of that is missing, ask.
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Before your first shift, every legitimate employer will run a right-to-work check. Your Student visa is digital, an eVisa, and you prove it with a share code. The whole thing takes about three minutes and is free.
It will not arrive as a temptation. It will arrive as a favour. December, the cafe is two people short, your manager likes you, and the question is casual: any chance you could do Saturday as well? You count it up and Saturday takes you to twenty-three hours that week. Everyone around you would say yes. You are the only person at that counter for whom yes has a visa attached.
Name the fear honestly: breaching your work condition can cost you the visa. The Home Office can cancel your permission for failing to comply with its conditions, your university is obliged to take breaches seriously, and a cancelled visa follows you into every future application, including the Graduate Route you are probably counting on. That is the real weight of the extra shift.
But the answer is not fear, it is a sentence you prepare in advance: 'My visa caps me at twenty hours a week in term time, so I can't take Saturday, but I can work full time from the 14th when the vacation starts.' Said early, that sentence has never cost a good worker a job. Managers plan around fixed constraints all the time; what they cannot plan around is finding out late. You hold a visa that lets you study at a British university and earn alongside it. Protect it like the asset it is.
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Every figure on this page traces to the sources below, accessed and verified on 12 July 2026. Numbered references [n] appear under the sections they support.
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