NPS Calculator
Enter your monthly contribution and horizon to see the projected corpus at retirement, how it splits between the lump sum and the compulsory annuity, and the pension that annuity would pay.
Your NPS account
At retirement
Estimated monthly pension
from a corpus of — at age —, after — of contributions
- Total invested —
- Investment returns —
- Corpus at exit —
- Lump sum you withdraw —
- Locked into the annuity —
What this calculator assumes
- A Tier 1 account only. Tier 2 balances are not locked, carry no annuity requirement, and should not be entered here.
- The contribution is paid at the start of every month and stays the same in rupee terms for the whole horizon. It does not rise with your salary.
- The return you enter is earned smoothly, every year, on the whole balance. A real NPS corpus moves with equity and bond markets and with the glide path your scheme preference applies as you age.
- Fund management charges, the CRA's account charges and the point-of-presence fees are not deducted. NPS charges are low by Indian standards but they are not nil, so the projected corpus is optimistic by a little.
- A non-government subscriber — the All Citizen Model or corporate NPS. Government-sector subscribers are still held to 60% lump sum / 40% annuity and this page does not model them.
- A normal exit at or after age 60 — vesting for the All Citizen Model is 15 years of subscription or age 60, whichever comes first. A premature exit runs the other way — at least 80% must buy an annuity and at most 20% comes to you — so the exit age is held at 60 or above.
- The percentage split is applied at every corpus size. The corpus tiers below ₹12 Lakh, where less or no annuity is required, are flagged in a note but are not applied to the figures.
- No tax is applied to any figure. The annuity is taxable as pension income; the lump-sum exemption is written as 60% of the corpus and may not have been raised to match the 80% the regulations now permit.
How the projection is built
The calculation runs in two stages, worth separating because only the first is arithmetic. Stage one accumulates your monthly contributions at the return you enter, on the annuity-due convention every Indian fund calculator uses: the instalment goes in at the start of the month, so it earns a full month of growth.
Corpus = C × [((1 + i)n − 1) ÷ i] × (1 + i)
C is the monthly contribution, n is the number of months from your present age to exit, and i is the annual return divided by twelve. Stage two splits that corpus. A chosen share buys an annuity; the rest comes to you as a lump sum. The monthly pension is simply the annuity corpus multiplied by the annuity rate and divided by twelve.
Put real numbers through it. A 30-year-old contributing ₹5,000 a month until 60, at 10% a year, puts in ₹18 lakh of their own money and reaches a corpus of roughly ₹1.14 crore. Take the minimum 20% annuity share and about ₹22.8 lakh buys the annuity while ₹91.2 lakh comes to you as a lump sum. At a 6% annuity rate that annuity pays about ₹11,400 a month for life.
The 80/20 rule that replaced 60/40
This is the part most sources still get wrong. For years, a non-government NPS subscriber exiting at superannuation could take 60% lump sum / 40% annuity. The PFRDA (Exits and Withdrawals under the NPS) (Amendment) Regulations, 2025, signed on 12 December 2025 and gazetted on 16 December 2025, changed that: the lump sum ceiling rose to 80% and the compulsory annuity floor fell to 20%. If you see the change dated 19 December, that is PFRDA's press release rather than the notification.
The practical effect is large. On the ₹1.14 crore corpus above, the old split left ₹45.6 lakh in the annuity and paid roughly ₹22,800 a month; the new one leaves ₹22.8 lakh and pays roughly ₹11,400 — but hands you an extra ₹22.8 lakh in capital you control. Whether that is an improvement depends entirely on what you do with the difference, which is why the table above shows every annuity share rather than picking one for you.
One qualifier carries the whole section, and it is the thing most likely to be got wrong anywhere you read about this. The amendment reaches the non-government sector only — the All Citizen Model and corporate NPS. A government-sector subscriber is still held to 60% lump sum / 40% annuity. A headline reading "NPS now allows an 80% lump sum" is correct for a private subscriber and simply wrong for a central or state government employee, and this page models the private position. Almost every competing calculator still shows 60% lump sum / 40% annuity for everybody, so if you see that figure elsewhere it is not that one of us has the arithmetic wrong — it is that the regulation moved under one sector and not the other.
There is also a tax loose end nobody has tidied up. The exemption for the exit lump sum is written as 60% of the corpus — the old withdrawal ceiling — and the NPS Trust still states 60%. Nothing we could locate confirms it was raised when the ceiling went to 80%, so treat the slice between the two as possibly taxable. That is a live gap in the rules, not a hedge on our part.
A small corpus may not have to buy an annuity at all
The percentage split is the rule for a large corpus. The same amendment set two tiers below it for a normal exit. If the total corpus is ₹8 Lakh or less you may take the entire balance, with no annuity purchase required — or draw it down instead, if you prefer. Between that and ₹12 Lakh you may take ₹6 Lakh as a lump sum and must draw the balance down over at least 6 years. Only above ₹12 Lakh does the 80/20 split bite.
The calculator applies the percentage you choose at every corpus size, and flags it beside the results when your projection lands in one of those tiers — the split shown is then not one the regulations would force on you. It matters far more to a late starter than to the thirty-year case above.
Tier 1 and Tier 2 are not the same product
Tier 1 is the pension account: it attracts the tax deductions, it is locked until exit, and everything on this page applies to it. Tier 2 sits alongside it in the same underlying funds at the same low charges, but with no lock-in, no annuity requirement and — for most subscribers — no deduction. The confusion matters because people quote a single "NPS balance" that mixes the two, and only the Tier 1 balance is subject to the 20% annuity floor. If you contribute to both, run this calculator on the Tier 1 instalment alone.
The 80CCD(2) figure that is constantly conflated
Your employer's contribution to your NPS account is deductible separately from your own, and the ceiling depends on which regime you are taxed under. Under the new regime it is 14% of salary. Under the old regime, for a private-sector employee, it is 10% — the position for government employees is different again.
These two get swapped constantly, including in payroll communications. An employee on the new regime whose employer contributes at 10% of salary is leaving deductible headroom unused; one who assumes the higher figure applies under the old regime will find part of the employer contribution taxed as salary. Read your own payslip against the right figure, not the one a colleague quoted.
Your own contributions are treated differently again, and the regime decides it. Under the new regime the employer contribution is the only NPS deduction that survives — the deductions for your own contribution and for the additional voluntary slab are available on the old regime only. The rupee limits on those are not carried in this site's sourced rate data, so check them on the Income Tax Department portal rather than trusting a number from an older article.
A note on the label: "80CCD(2)" is a section of the Income-tax Act, 1961, which the Income-tax Act, 2025 replaced from 1 April 2026. The equivalent provision in the new Act could not be read directly, so we keep the number payroll still uses rather than guess a new one. The percentages are unchanged.
The annuity rate is the weakest number on this page
Everything up to the corpus is arithmetic applied to your own assumptions. The pension is something else: it turns on a rate an annuity provider will quote decades from now, in interest-rate conditions nobody can forecast, for a variant you have not yet chosen.
The variant matters as much as the rate. A life annuity with return of purchase price hands your nominee the capital back when you die, and pays a visibly smaller monthly amount than a plain life annuity that keeps it; a joint-life annuity covering your spouse pays less again. Run the calculator a percentage point either side of your guess and see how far the pension moves. That spread is the honest answer.
What this calculator cannot tell you
It cannot tell you what your corpus will actually be — that depends on markets and on the scheme preference and fund manager you pick. It does not deduct NPS charges, which are small but real and compound against you over thirty years. It does not adjust for inflation, so a ₹1.14 crore corpus in 2056 is not ₹1.14 crore of today's purchasing power; at 6% inflation it is closer to a fifth of that.
Nor can it tell you whether NPS suits you at all, which annuity to buy, or how much of the lump sum to keep liquid. Those are advice questions and we are not licensed to answer them. What it does honestly is show the shape of the trade: how the corpus grows, how much you can take in hand under the current rules, and what the remainder buys as income.
Common questions
Every other calculator splits my corpus 60/40. Why does this one say 80/20?
Because the rule changed and most published content has not caught up. The PFRDA (Exits and Withdrawals under the NPS) (Amendment) Regulations, 2025 were signed on 12 December 2025 and gazetted on 16 December 2025. They raised the lump sum a non-government subscriber may take at a normal exit to 80%, leaving a minimum of 20% to buy an annuity. Two cautions. Government-sector subscribers were not touched and remain at 60% lump sum / 40% annuity. And a great deal of coverage dates the change to 19 December 2025 — that is PFRDA's press release, not the notification.
Should I take the maximum 80% as a lump sum?
That is a genuine trade-off, not a default. A larger lump sum gives you capital you control and can invest, spend or leave to your family. A larger annuity share gives you an income that cannot run out however long you live, which is exactly the risk a retiree cannot self-insure against. The calculator shows both sides at every annuity share from 20% to 100%, so you can see what each rupee taken in hand costs in monthly pension. We are not licensed to advise you on which to pick.
Is the pension figure a quote I can rely on?
No. The monthly pension shown is your annuity corpus multiplied by the annuity rate you entered and divided by twelve. The actual rate is set by the annuity service provider on the day you buy the annuity, which may be thirty years away, and it depends on the annuity variant you choose — life only, with return of purchase price, joint life with your spouse, and so on. Variants that return the purchase price to your nominee pay a noticeably lower monthly amount. Treat the number as an illustration of shape, not a promise of size.
How is the money taxed when I exit?
Two treatments apply to the same corpus, and there is an unresolved gap between them. The annuity pays a monthly pension that is taxable as pension income, at your slab rate, in every year you receive it. The lump sum is exempt — but the exemption is written as 60% of the corpus, which was the old withdrawal ceiling, and the NPS Trust still states 60%. The regulations now permit 80%. We could find nothing confirming the exemption was raised to match, so the slice between the two may be taxable. Do not plan on the whole lump sum being tax free until you have confirmed it.
My projected corpus is small. Do I have to buy an annuity at all?
Possibly not. The same amendment set corpus tiers for a normal exit. If the total corpus is ₹8 Lakh or less you may take the whole balance, with no annuity purchase required. Between that and ₹12 Lakh you may take ₹6 Lakh as a lump sum and must draw the rest down over at least 6 years. Only above ₹12 Lakh does the percentage split apply. This calculator applies your chosen percentage at every corpus size and flags it beside the results when your projection falls in a tier where it would not be compelled.
What return should I assume for my NPS corpus?
There is no correct figure, and 10% is a placeholder rather than a forecast. Your actual return depends on the asset allocation you choose between equity, corporate bonds, government securities and alternatives, on the auto-choice glide path if you use one, and on the pension fund manager you select. A corpus that is mostly government securities will behave very differently from one holding the maximum permitted equity. Run the projection at a pessimistic rate as well as an optimistic one, and plan around the pessimistic number.
Sources
Rates and rules on this page were read directly from the following sources on the dates shown. Figures change — if you are about to act on one, confirm it at the source.