The short answer
- You add it up yourself. Total the new money paid into every ISA since 6 April and take it from £20,000. That is your remaining allowance.
- HMRC does not show it in-year. Providers report your subscriptions to HMRC after the tax year ends, so HMRC spots an overpayment after the event, not as you go.
- Each provider sees only its own ISA. A provider may show the full £20,000 as available even if you have used some of it elsewhere, because it cannot see your other ISAs.
- Transfers and interest do not count. Moving old ISA money between providers, and interest or growth inside the wrapper, do not use this year's allowance. New money does.
How do you check how much ISA allowance you have left?
Add up every pound of new money you have paid into your ISAs since 6 April, then take that total from £20,000. What is left is your remaining allowance for the 2026/27 tax year. There is no official tool that does this for you, so the figure is only as accurate as your own record of what you have paid in.
In practice, that means four steps:
- List every ISA you have paid into since 6 April this year: Cash, Stocks and Shares, Innovative Finance and Lifetime ISAs all share the same allowance.
- For each one, find the new money you have added this tax year. Ignore transfers in, interest and investment growth.
- Add those new-money figures together.
- Take the total from £20,000. The result is what you have left to pay in before 6 April next year.
The allowance you are tracking
- Overall ISA allowance, 2026/27
- £20,000
- Across all your adult ISAs
- Who keeps track of it
- You
- No HMRC in-year total exists
- Unused allowance carried forward
- None
- It is lost when the tax year ends on 5 April
- Cash ISA limit from 6 April 2027
- £20,000
- Planned cut to £12,000 cancelled
Does HMRC tell you how much ISA allowance you have used?
No, not while the tax year is running. Your ISA providers report what you have subscribed to HMRC, but they do this in annual returns after the tax year ends. That is why HMRC can identify an overpayment after the event, and may then write to you, but cannot show you a live figure as you pay money in.
HMRC’s guidance for ISA managers is clear about whose job this is: “Investors who subscribe to ISAs held with different managers are responsible for ensuring that they do not exceed the overall subscription limit.” In other words, staying inside £20,000 is your responsibility, not your providers’ and not HMRC’s.
HMRC is researching digital ISA services, and tax-free savings newsletter 23 (September 2026) says user research sessions with ISA managers and administrators run from October to December 2026. That work is aimed at the firms that run ISAs, though, not at building a saver-facing allowance tracker, so do not assume a tool exists that shows your total across providers. For now, the arithmetic is yours to do.
Can your ISA provider tell you how much you have left?
Your provider can tell you exactly what you have paid into the ISA you hold with them this tax year. Many banks and investment platforms show a “remaining allowance” figure on the account page or app, usually at the top of the screen next to the balance.
The catch is that this figure assumes the ISA with that provider is the only one you have paid into. HMRC’s guidance says managers “do not need to establish the amount subscribed to ISAs held with other managers”, so a provider literally cannot see what you have paid in elsewhere. A provider can show the full £20,000 as available even when you have already used part of it with someone else. If you hold ISAs with more than one provider, add the figures up yourself rather than trusting any single screen.
How do you add it up across more than one ISA?
The following example is illustrative, with round numbers, and the amounts are not advice. Suppose that since 6 April you have made these moves:
| What you did | Amount | Uses allowance? |
|---|---|---|
| New money into a Cash ISA (April) | £5,000 | Yes |
| New money into a Stocks and Shares ISA (June) | £3,000 | Yes |
| Transferred an old Cash ISA to a new provider | £18,000 | No |
| Interest paid into the Cash ISA | £120 | No |
Only the two payments of new money count: £5,000 into the Cash ISA and £3,000 into the Stocks and Shares ISA, which is £8,000 in total. The £18,000 transfer is previous-year money moved between providers, so it does not touch this year’s allowance, and the £120 of interest is not a subscription either. That leaves £12,000 of the £20,000 allowance still available before 6 April next year.
What counts towards your allowance, and what does not?
New money you pay in counts, however it arrives: HMRC treats a subscription as the cash you add by cheque, direct debit, debit or charge card, or a cash transfer that is not a provider-to-provider ISA transfer. Three common things do not count:
- Transfers of money from previous tax years. Moving an existing ISA from one provider to another as an official transfer does not use fresh allowance. See how ISA transfers work.
- Interest, dividends and growth inside the wrapper. These build up tax-free and are never counted as new subscriptions.
- Money you put back into a flexible ISA. If your ISA is flexible, you can take cash out and pay it back in the same tax year without it reducing your allowance a second time.
The flexible point changes the arithmetic. gov.uk’s own example: if you pay £10,000 into an ISA and then take out £3,000, you can later pay in £13,000 if the ISA is flexible (the remaining £10,000 plus the £3,000 you took out), but only £10,000 if it is not. “Your provider can tell you if your ISA is flexible,” gov.uk says, so check rather than assume. The flexible ISA guide explains how replacements are tracked.
What if you have already paid into an ISA this year and cannot remember?
This is a common worry, especially for anyone who opened an account early in the tax year and then forgot. Because no central record is available to you in-year, reconstruct it from your own paperwork:
- Scan your current account and card statements from 6 April onwards for any payment that went into an ISA.
- Log in to each ISA provider and look at this year’s contributions, not the balance, which includes transfers and interest.
- If you think there is an old account you have lost track of, the guide on finding a lost ISA shows how to trace it.
If you still cannot be sure, the safe course is not to pay into a new ISA on a guess. Paying in more than £20,000 does not give you extra tax-free room: HMRC’s rules remove the excess, and tax can be due on interest earned on it. The guide on paying too much into an ISA sets out what happens then.
When does the allowance reset, and can you carry it forward?
The allowance runs with the tax year, from 6 April to 5 April, and a fresh £20,000 starts every 6 April. You cannot carry unused allowance forward: HMRC’s guidance says an investor who has not subscribed up to the limit “cannot carry forward the difference and add it to the subscription limit for the next year”. Anything you have not used by 5 April is simply gone. The ISA deadline guide has the cut-off dates and how to make a payment land in time.
The overall allowance stays at £20,000 from 6 April 2027, and so does the Cash ISA limit: a planned cut to £12,000 for savers aged 64 or under was cancelled in the Budget on 28 October 2026. See the Cash ISA limit.
Keeping track through the year
The simplest way to avoid the problem is to keep your own running total. A note or a spreadsheet with the date, provider and amount of every new ISA payment takes seconds to update and means you never have to reconstruct the year from statements. If you hold ISAs with several providers, or split your allowance across cash and investments, it is the only record that sees all of them at once. For a quick check against the rules, the guide on how many ISAs you can have covers paying into more than one ISA of the same type in a year.
Questions people ask
Can I check my ISA allowance on the HMRC app or my tax account?
No. HMRC does not publish a running total of your ISA allowance during the tax year. Providers send HMRC their subscription figures after the tax year ends, so HMRC can identify an overpayment later but cannot show you a live figure now. To check in-year, add up what you have paid into each ISA yourself.
My provider says I have the full £20,000 left. Is that right?
Only if you have paid nothing into any other ISA this tax year. HMRC says managers do not need to establish what you have paid into ISAs held with other managers, so a provider's remaining-allowance figure reflects only the ISA you hold with them. If you have paid into an ISA elsewhere since 6 April, the real figure is lower.
Does transferring an old ISA use up my allowance?
No. Transferring money you saved in a previous tax year from one provider to another, done as an official transfer rather than a withdrawal, does not count against this year's £20,000. Only new money you pay in during the current tax year counts. See how ISA transfers work.
Does interest or investment growth count towards my allowance?
No. Interest earned in a Cash ISA, and growth or dividends inside a Stocks and Shares ISA, do not count as subscriptions. They grow inside the wrapper without using any allowance. Only fresh money you pay in uses the £20,000.
How do I find out which ISAs I have already paid into this year?
Check your bank statements and card statements from 6 April onwards for payments into any ISA, and log in to each provider to see this year's contributions. If you think you have an old ISA you have lost track of, the guide on finding a lost ISA explains how to trace it.
When does my ISA allowance reset?
On 6 April, the start of the new tax year. HMRC's guidance says an investor who has not used the full limit in a year cannot carry the difference forward, so any unused allowance is lost when the tax year ends on 5 April.
Sources
- 1 Individual Savings Accounts: how ISAs work (GOV.UK) (gov.uk)
- 2 How to manage ISA subscriptions for your investors (HMRC guidance for ISA managers), GOV.UK (gov.uk)
- 3 Individual Savings Accounts: withdrawing your money (GOV.UK) (gov.uk)
- 4 Tax-free savings newsletter 23 (HMRC, September 2026), GOV.UK (gov.uk)
- 5 Cash ISA limit reduction: tax information and impact note (HMRC, 17 September 2026), GOV.UK (gov.uk)
