NPS corpus calculator

This calculator projects your National Pension System corpus at retirement and the pension it buys. It takes the employee’s 10% and the government’s 14% contributions on your basic pay plus dearness allowance, compounds them at an assumed return to superannuation at 60, adds any corpus you already hold, and then shows the exit: the tax-free lump sum you may take and the monthly pension from the annuity. Enter your figures below; the result updates as you type. Because NPS is market-linked, the return and the annuity rate are your assumptions, not guarantees, while the 24% contribution and the exit rules are fixed. The method and a worked example follow.

Calculator

Your corpus at a glance

What the calculator computes

The calculator takes your age, any corpus you already hold, your monthly basic pay plus dearness allowance, the expected yearly growth in that pay, the expected return, the lump sum you want to take, and the annuity rate. From these it projects the Tier-I corpus at 60 and the pension it buys.

The first output is the corpus at 60, built from three parts the breakdown shows separately: the corpus you already have, the future contributions of you and the government, and the investment growth on both. The second is the lump sum, the share you withdraw at retirement, tax-free up to 60%. The third is the annuity corpus, the balance that must buy an annuity. The fourth is the monthly pension the annuity pays at the assumed rate.

The formula

The contribution each month is 24% of your basic pay plus dearness allowance: 10% from you and 14% from the government, both credited to your Tier-I account. That contribution is invested and compounds. The corpus at retirement is the future value of the monthly contribution stream, plus any corpus you already hold compounded over the same period:

Corpus at 60 = (existing corpus, compounded) + (future value of the monthly 24% contributions)

The calculator projects this month by month, applying the assumed annual return as a monthly rate and stepping the contribution up each year by your expected pay growth, so a rising salary raises the contribution over a career. The monthly rate is the annual return divided by twelve, the convention Indian NPS calculators use. Because the contribution grows and the return compounds over decades, most of the final corpus is investment growth rather than the money paid in, which the chart makes plain.

How much you can take at exit

At superannuation, the split between the lump sum and the annuity follows fixed rules, revised by the PFRDA exit regulations with effect from 16 December 2025. Above a corpus of Rs. 12 lakh, you may withdraw up to 60% as a lump sum and must use at least 40% to buy an annuity; every split in between is allowed, so you can annuitise more than 40% if you want a larger pension. A corpus of Rs. 8 to 12 lakh lets you take a lump sum of up to Rs. 6 lakh, with the balance annuitised. A corpus of Rs. 8 lakh or less may be withdrawn in full, with no compulsory annuity, because a small corpus would buy a negligible pension. The calculator applies the band that fits your projected corpus and caps the lump sum accordingly.

Two other routes exist. On a premature exit before 60, the rule reverses: at least 80% must be annuitised and only up to 20% taken as a lump sum. And instead of a one-time lump sum, a Systematic Lump Sum Withdrawal lets you draw the 60% in instalments after 60. This calculator models the standard superannuation exit at 60.

Tax treatment

The lump sum of up to 60% of the corpus is exempt from income tax under Section 10(12A) of the Income-tax Act. The amount that buys the annuity is not taxed at the point of purchase; the pension the annuity then pays is taxable as income in the year it is received. During service, your own contribution is deductible under Section 80CCD(1), within the Rs. 1,50,000 ceiling, with a further Rs. 50,000 under Section 80CCD(1B); the government’s contribution is deductible under Section 80CCD(2) up to 14% of salary, and Section 80CCD(2) is the one NPS deduction that continues under the new tax regime. The Income-tax Act, 2025, effective 1 April 2026, re-enacts these provisions under renumbered sections.

A worked example

Take an employee aged 30 with no existing corpus, on a basic pay plus dearness allowance of Rs. 50,000 a month, expecting pay to grow 5% a year and the corpus to return 8%, taking the maximum 60% lump sum, and assuming a 6% annuity.

The monthly contribution starts at 24% of Rs. 50,000, which is Rs. 12,000, and rises with pay each year. Over the 30 years to 60, compounding at 8%, the corpus grows to about Rs. 2.99 crore, of which roughly Rs. 96 lakh is the contributions and the rest is investment growth. At 60%, 60%, about Rs. 1.80 crore, is taken as a tax-free lump sum, and 40%, about Rs. 1.20 crore, buys the annuity, which at 6% pays a pension of about Rs. 59,885 a month, taxable as income.

Now suppose the same employee already holds Rs. 20 lakh in NPS today. That corpus compounds at 8% over the 30 years to about Rs. 2.19 crore on its own, so the total corpus at 60 rises to about Rs. 5.18 crore, the lump sum to about Rs. 3.11 crore, and the pension to about Rs. 1.04 lakh a month. The existing balance matters, which is why the calculator lets you enter it.

Notes and scope

This is a projection for the standard superannuation exit at 60, not a guaranteed figure. The corpus depends on the return the funds actually earn and the pension on the annuity rate at retirement, neither of which is fixed, so treat the output as an illustration and revise the assumptions to see the range. It does not model a premature exit, the market path of returns year by year, or a partial withdrawal during service. An NPS employee may instead opt for the Unified Pension Scheme, which assures a defined payout; the UPS payout calculator works that out. For the scheme itself, see the National Pension System article.

Related Articles

• National Pension System
• Unified Pension Scheme
• UPS payout calculator
• Old Pension Scheme
• Rule 44 pension calculator
• Central government pension
• Commutation of pension calculator
• Gratuity calculator
• Family pension
• Dearness allowance
• Income tax for government employees
• 7th Central Pay Commission
• Pay matrix
• Central government employees in India

External references

• Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority
• Department of Financial Services
• National Pension System Trust
• Department of Pension and Pensioners’ Welfare