The Sukanya Samriddhi Account pays 8.2% a year for Q2 FY 2026-27, the quarter running from 1 July to 30 September 2026, and the interest is exempt from income tax. It can be opened by a parent or guardian for a girl child who is below ten years of age, with a limit of two accounts per family. You deposit between ₹250 and ₹1,50,000 in a financial year, and you only have to do that for the first fifteen years — the account then keeps compounding until it matures at twenty-one years.
That last sentence is the part most coverage skips, and it is worth more than the headline rate. On the small savings table 8.2% is the joint-highest rate, tied only with the Senior Citizens Savings Scheme, whose interest is taxable while this is not.
Who can open one, and how many
The account is opened by a parent or legal guardian in the name of a girl child who has not yet turned ten. There is no lower age limit — a newborn qualifies. Once she is ten years and a day old the door is closed, and there is no discretion at the counter.
Two accounts per family is the ceiling — one for each of two girl children. The exception is for multiple births: a third account is permitted where the second birth produced twins or triplets, or where triplets were born first. The office will ask for a birth certificate and an affidavit to that effect, and there is no other route to a third account.
The guardian operates the account until the girl turns eighteen, at which point she may operate it herself. Accounts can be opened at any post office or an authorised branch of most banks, and transferred between offices free of charge if the family moves; the scheme, the rate and the rules are identical wherever it is held.
The rate resets every quarter
Small savings rates are notified quarterly by the Ministry of Finance, and Sukanya Samriddhi resets with them. Rates across the small savings family have been unchanged since April 2024, which has created the impression that the number is fixed. It is not.
This matters because it is the opposite of how the Senior Citizens Savings Scheme works, where the rate in force on the day you open the account stays with you for the whole five-year term. Sukanya Samriddhi behaves like PPF: your balance earns whatever the Ministry has notified for the current quarter, and a cut next January applies to your existing balance from that day. Nothing about opening the account today locks in 8.2%.
Confirm the current quarter’s notified rate on the National Savings Institute page before you deposit, and treat any 21-year maturity projection, including the ones below, as arithmetic at a constant rate rather than a forecast.
Deposits: ₹250 to ₹1.5 lakh, and only for fifteen years
The minimum is ₹250 in a financial year and the maximum is ₹1,50,000, the same ceiling PPF carries. Deposits are required for fifteen years from the date the account is opened, not fifteen financial years from the child’s birth. Miss the ₹250 minimum in any year and the account goes into default. It can be revived by paying the arrears for each missed year plus a prescribed default fee for each defaulted year. The notified fee could not be read directly from a government source for this update, so confirm it at the counter rather than from a secondary site.
The inflexibility is genuine: the scheme expects money every year for fifteen years, from a household whose income may not cooperate for all fifteen. Before committing to ₹1,50,000 a year, ask whether you could keep up ₹50,000 through a bad patch. The ₹250 floor is deliberately low so the account survives one, but a plan built on the maximum and delivered at the minimum ends up with a fraction of the corpus.
Deposit early in the financial year rather than in March. Interest compounds annually, so money in the account from April earns for the full year.
Fifteen years of deposits, twenty-one years of compounding
This distinction is the strongest feature of the scheme and it is routinely lost. Deposits stop at year fifteen; the account matures at year twenty-one. In between, six years pass in which nothing is paid in and the whole balance compounds.
At a constant 8.2%, here is what that looks like. The mechanics are the same as PPF, so the PPF calculator will model the compounding for you — there is no dedicated Sukanya calculator here yet, and the arithmetic transfers as long as you set the rate to 8.2% rather than the PPF rate.
| Deposited each year | Total paid in over 15 years | Balance at year 15 | Balance at maturity, year 21 |
|---|---|---|---|
| ₹50,000 | ₹7,50,000 | about ₹14.9 lakh | about ₹23.9 lakh |
| ₹1,50,000 | ₹22,50,000 | about ₹44.8 lakh | about ₹71.8 lakh |
Read the last row across. Deposits of ₹22.5 lakh reach roughly ₹44.8 lakh by the time they stop, and roughly ₹27 lakh more arrives over six years in which the family pays nothing. Those six idle years contribute more than the fifteen years of deposits did.
Both figures assume the deposit is made at the start of each financial year, annual compounding, and 8.2% held for all twenty-one years. The rate assumption is the weak one — it will move — and the structural point does not depend on it.
Taking money out
There are three exits, and only one is routine.
Partial withdrawal for higher education. Once the account holder has turned eighteen, or has passed the tenth standard, whichever comes first, up to 50% of the balance at the end of the preceding financial year may be withdrawn for her higher education. The office requires proof — a confirmed admission offer or a fee schedule — and the amount is capped at the fees and charges actually payable, taken as a lump sum or in up to five annual instalments. Note the base: 50% of last year’s closing balance, not 50% of today’s.
Maturity. The account matures twenty-one years from the date of opening, and the balance with interest is paid to the account holder on application with proof of identity, residence and citizenship.
Premature closure. Permitted on the death of the account holder, when the balance is paid to the guardian with interest, and on extreme compassionate grounds — a life-threatening illness of the account holder, or the death of the guardian operating the account — with the approval of the relevant authority and documentary evidence. Beyond that, an account may be closed on the account holder’s marriage, provided she is at least eighteen and the application is made no earlier than one month before and no later than three months after the date of marriage. An account closed for any other reason after five years earns interest at the Post Office Savings Account rate rather than the Sukanya rate, which is roughly half.
There is no loan facility against a Sukanya Samriddhi balance, unlike PPF.
The tax treatment, and why the argument for it has changed
Sukanya Samriddhi is EEE — the deposit qualifies for a deduction, the interest is exempt, and the maturity amount is exempt.
But the first E has quietly stopped mattering for most people. The deduction long known as section 80C is available under the old regime only, and the new regime is now the default. Under the Income-tax Act, 2025, which took effect on 1 April 2026 and repealed the Income-tax Act, 1961, the new regime sits at section 202 and the old regime survives only as an option you must actively elect into. For most households there is no longer a reason to elect it: with a ₹4 lakh basic exemption and the rebate that takes tax to nil on total income up to ₹12 lakh, the new regime wins for the large majority. Work your own case through old vs new tax regime rather than assuming.
So for most readers opening an account today, the deduction is worth nothing, and the scheme has to justify itself on the second and third E alone. It comfortably does. A tax-free 8.2% is worth about 11.9% before tax to someone taxed at 30% plus 4% cess, and that after-tax comparison, not the headline rate, is the one to run against any taxable deposit. The conclusion has not changed; the reasoning has, and much published Sukanya content still leads with the 80C deduction as though the old regime were the default. It has not been for some time.
Where it fits, and where it does not
Open one if you have a daughter under ten, you want a floor under her education and marriage costs that cannot be marked down by a bad market, and you can realistically fund it every year for fifteen years. On those terms the tax exemption on the interest is the part that is genuinely hard to replicate: nothing else on the small savings table pays a rate this high and leaves it untaxed.
Be honest about the constraints. The money is tied to one named child and to purposes the scheme specifies, for up to twenty-one years, with no loan facility and no general-purpose early exit. The deposit requirement is annual and unforgiving. And fifteen to twenty-one years is long enough that a diversified equity allocation could plausibly do better, at the cost of a range of outcomes rather than a certain one.
The reasonable resolution for a family that can bear market risk is both, not one: Sukanya Samriddhi sized to the part of the education cost that must be certain, and a monthly investment for the part that can tolerate a bad decade — size that second leg with the SIP calculator. Treating this account as the whole education plan is what caps the outcome; treating it as the floor is what it is good at.
If the child is already ten, the door is shut and PPF is the closest substitute — same ₹1.5 lakh cap, same EEE treatment, a lower rate but no restriction on who the money is for. The alternatives and their limits are laid out in post office savings schemes, and the case for a growth vehicle alongside a guaranteed one in NPS vs PPF.
Common questions
Do I have to keep depositing for all 21 years?
No, and this is the rule people most often get wrong. Deposits are required only for the first 15 years from the date the account is opened. The account then runs on for a further six years to its 21-year maturity, earning interest the whole time with nothing more paid in. Those last six years are not idle — at a constant 8.2% they multiply the balance by roughly 1.6 times. You cannot deposit during them, and you do not need to.
Is the 8.2% rate fixed for the life of the account?
No. Small savings rates are notified quarterly by the Ministry of Finance, on 1 April, 1 July, 1 October and 1 January, and Sukanya Samriddhi resets with them. The 8.2% shown for the current quarter applies to the balance now; it is not locked in the way a five-year fixed deposit rate is. Any projection of a maturity value 21 years out silently assumes the current rate holds for two decades, which it will not.
How many accounts can one family open?
Two, one for each of two girl children. A third account is permitted only where the second birth produced twins or triplets, or where triplets were born first, and the office will ask for an affidavit or birth certificate confirming it. There is no route to a third ordinary account. Each account is for one named girl child who must be below ten years of age on the day it is opened, and the account is operated by a parent or guardian until she turns eighteen.
Can I withdraw money for higher education fees?
Yes, within limits. Once the account holder has turned eighteen or has passed the tenth standard, whichever comes first, you may withdraw up to 50% of the balance standing at the end of the preceding financial year, for higher education. The office asks for proof — an admission offer or a fee schedule — and the withdrawal is capped at the fee actually payable. It can be taken as a lump sum or in instalments, one a year for up to five years.
Is Sukanya Samriddhi better than an equity mutual fund for education?
It is safer, not better, and the two answer different questions. Sukanya Samriddhi carries sovereign credit risk and nothing else, and its interest is exempt from tax. A long-horizon equity allocation may well do better over 15 to 21 years, but it can be down heavily in any given year, including the year the fees fall due. Many families sensibly use both — the account for the floor under the education cost, equity for the part that can absorb a bad decade.
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.