A £200/day CIS rate is not a £200/day take-home. Most construction workers know this in theory. Very few have actually run the numbers.

Run them honestly and the picture changes.

Start with the headline. Day rate £200. CIS deduction at source 20%. £40 goes to HMRC before you see it. £160 hits your account.
That £160 is not yours either.

You still owe Class 4 National Insurance — 6% on profits between £12,570 and £50,270, then 2% above. You still owe income tax true-up at year end if your CIS deductions didn't cover the full bill. You probably owe accountant fees, public liability insurance, tools, transport, PPE, and a few quid for the inevitable chase-up letter from HMRC about a tax return that needed amending.
And then there's the bit nobody factors in. Downtime.
Most CIS workers lose four to six weeks a year to gaps between contracts, weather days with no pay, Christmas shutdowns, and the days where the site closes early because a delivery didn't arrive. That's £4,000-£6,000 of income that simply doesn't happen. Your "£46,000 a year" headline (£200 × 230 days) is more often £40,000-£42,000 in reality.

Strip the costs back out and most groundworkers, plumbers, and sparks on £200/day are taking home between £20,000 and £31,000 of actually-spendable income. That's not the number recruitment ads quote. It's the number that ends up in your bank.
So how does PAYE compare?

A worker on a £180-200 day-rate equivalent through a properly-run umbrella PAYE setup ends up in a different place. The headline rate is usually a bit lower — agencies factor in employer NI and apprenticeship levy, so the assignment rate gets adjusted. But the take-home picture is structurally different.
Holiday pay is paid. Statutory sick pay is paid. Pension contributions are made automatically and matched up to the threshold. There's no Class 4 NI to find at year end, no self-assessment to file, no accountant retainer, no surprise tax bill in January.
The trade-off is real. CIS gives you flexibility, expense claims, and the ability to switch sites without an employment relationship to unpick. PAYE gives you predictability, statutory rights, and a payslip that reconciles to a P60 without three months of receipts and chasing.

Here's the bit most subcontractors get wrong.

They assume CIS always pays better because the headline rate looks higher. It doesn't. Once you factor in the four weeks of unpaid holiday a PAYE worker gets, the SSP they get when they're ill, the pension contributions matched by the umbrella, and the absence of accountant fees and tax-return admin, the gap closes hard. For some workers it inverts entirely.
The honest answer depends on three things.
How many days a year you actually work — not the days you're available, the days you're on site getting paid. If that number is below 200, PAYE often wins on take-home. If it's 230+ and you're disciplined about expenses, CIS usually wins.
How much you spend on tools, transport, and trade costs. If your expenses are over £4,000-5,000 a year, the CIS expense-claim mechanism gives you back enough to make the scheme work harder. If you're a low-expense trade running a phone, a van and a basic toolkit, PAYE simplicity often beats it.

How much administrative tolerance you have. CIS means a self-assessment return every year, receipts kept, an accountant on retainer, and a tax bill to find every January. PAYE is automatic. For some workers that simplicity is worth £1,000-2,000 a year on its own.

There's no universal right answer. There's a right answer for your specific working pattern, your specific expense profile, and your specific tolerance for paperwork.

What we'd say is this: most subcontractors pick CIS because the headline rate looks better and the lads on site are on it. That isn't a calculation. That's a default.

We handle both CIS and Umbrella PAYE for construction workers, and we'll tell you honestly which one fits your circumstances better — including telling you when CIS is the right call and we're not the right fit for you. If you want a proper look at your numbers before you commit, get in touch.