Salary by pay level

This page shows what each 7th CPC pay level pays. Every level has a fixed entry basic pay, and on top of it come dearness allowance at 60 per cent and house rent allowance by city. The table below lists the entry basic, the dearness allowance, the house rent allowance for an X-class city, and the approximate monthly gross for all 18 levels, from Level 1 to Level 18. The gross is before transport allowance and before deductions, so it is higher than what reaches your bank; the “in-hand” link on each row opens the 7th CPC salary calculator set to that level, which computes the exact take-home after deductions and income tax.

Salary at each pay level

The figures are for the entry cell of each level, an X-class city, and dearness allowance at 60 per cent. Your own basic will be higher if you have earned annual increments up the level, and your house rent allowance will be 20 or 10 per cent instead of 30 in a Y or Z-class city. Enter your exact level, cell, and city in the calculator for your figure.

How to read a level

The 7th Central Pay Commission replaced the older pay bands and grade pay with a single pay matrix of 18 levels. A level is a column in that matrix, and each level has a starting cell, the entry basic pay shown above, and a series of cells above it, one for each annual increment of 3 per cent. So two people at the same level can draw different basic pay depending on how long they have served, but they start from the same entry figure.

The levels are not evenly spaced in money terms. The gap from Level 1 to Level 2 is small, a few hundred rupees of entry basic, while the gap from Level 13 to Level 14 is large, because the higher levels correspond to senior posts with wider pay differentials. Level 13A is an additional level inserted between 13 and 14, used mainly for certain posts in the organised services. Level 18 is the apex, a single fixed figure of Rs. 2,50,000 with no increments, drawn by the Cabinet Secretary and officers of equivalent rank.

What the gross includes, and what it does not

The gross figure in the table is deliberately limited to the three components that are the same for everyone at a level in a given city: the entry basic pay, dearness allowance at 60 per cent of that basic, and house rent allowance at the X-class rate of 30 per cent. It is an “approximate gross” for a reason.

It excludes transport allowance , which is a flat amount by level and city with dearness allowance added on it, rather than a percentage of basic, so it does not scale the way the other components do. It also excludes any post-specific allowance. And, most importantly, the gross is before deductions: the employee’s contribution to the National Pension System , the Central Government Health Scheme, the group insurance scheme, and income tax all come out of it. The amount that reaches the bank, the take-home, is therefore lower than the gross, and by a margin that grows with income because of tax. The take-home salary article works through that gap, and the calculator computes it exactly.

Levels, grades, and posts

A pay level is tied to a grade of post, not to a job title. Broadly, Levels 1 to 5 cover Group C posts, from the entry multi-tasking staff up to senior clerical and technical grades. Levels 6 to 9 cover Group B posts and some entry Group A, the section officer and equivalent grades. Level 10 is the entry level for directly recruited Group A officers, the civil services and equivalent, at an entry basic of Rs. 56,100. Levels 11 to 14 cover the middle and senior management of the Group A services, and Levels 15 to 18 the top: joint secretary, additional secretary, secretary, and the apex.

The same level can carry very different titles across departments, because the level reflects the grade and pay, while the title reflects the function. This is why a job advertisement that states a pay level tells you the pay even before it tells you the work: the level fixes the basic, and the basic fixes the dearness allowance and house rent allowance on top. The central government jobs hub sets out how posts, levels, and recruitment fit together, and the grade pay and pay band articles explain the older system that the levels replaced.

The annual increment and moving up

The entry basic in the table is only the start of a level. Each year, on 1 July, an employee earns an annual increment of 3 per cent of basic pay, which moves them one cell up their level. So a person who has spent several years at Level 7 draws more than the Rs. 44,900 entry basic, and their dearness allowance and house rent allowance, being percentages of basic, rise with it. Over a full career in one level, the basic can grow by half again or more from the entry cell to the top.

Moving to a higher level is a separate event. It happens on promotion, when the post’s recruitment rules place it in a higher level, or under the Modified Assured Career Progression scheme, which grants a financial upgradation to the next level after 10, 20, and 30 years if regular promotion has not come. On moving up, the basic is fixed at the next cell in the new level that is higher than the present basic, so a promotion is always worth at least one increment, and usually more. This is why two people recruited to the same Level 7 post in the same year can, a decade later, sit at different levels and very different salaries.

How the allowances scale with the level

The three components in the table do not scale together. Basic pay is fixed by the level and cell. Dearness allowance is 60 per cent of that basic, so it rises exactly in step with basic: it is the same 60 per cent at Level 1 and Level 18, but a far larger rupee amount at the top. House rent allowance is likewise a percentage of basic, 30 per cent in an X city, so it too scales with basic.

Transport allowance is the exception, and it is why the table stops at an approximate gross. It is a flat amount set by a band of levels, not a percentage of basic, with dearness allowance added on top of it. An employee at Level 9 and above in a higher-transport city draws a fixed Rs. 7,200 plus dearness allowance, while one at Levels 3 to 8 draws Rs. 3,600 plus dearness allowance, regardless of their exact basic within that band. So transport allowance is a large share of the gross at the lower levels and a small share at the top, the opposite of how the basic-linked components behave. The transport allowance article sets out the bands.

The same level in a Y or Z city

The table assumes an X-class city, where house rent allowance is 30 per cent of basic. The same level pays a different gross elsewhere, because house rent allowance falls to 20 per cent in a Y-class city and 10 per cent in a Z-class city.

Take Level 7 again, with an entry basic of Rs. 44,900 and dearness allowance of Rs. 26,940. In an X city, house rent allowance is Rs. 13,470 and the gross is about Rs. 85,310. In a Y city it is Rs. 8,980, and the gross falls to about Rs. 80,820. In a Z city it is Rs. 4,490, and the gross is about Rs. 76,330. The basic and dearness allowance are identical; only the house rent allowance changes, so the same post pays roughly Rs. 9,000 a month less in the smallest towns than in the metros, before the transport allowance and deductions that also vary. The house rent allowance article and the HRA calculator work out the figure for a given city.

From pay bands and grade pay to levels

The pay levels are the 7th CPC’s replacement for an older, more complicated system. Until 2016, central pay was built from a pay band, a broad range, plus a grade pay, a fixed amount that marked the seniority of the post within the band. An employee’s pay was the sum of the two, and the grade pay was the number that really identified the grade, so posts were described by it: “grade pay 4,600” or “grade pay 5,400”.

The 7th CPC found that the pay-band-and-grade-pay structure produced anomalies, where a junior could sometimes draw more than a senior, and it collapsed the two into a single figure per cell. Each old grade pay maps to a new level: grade pay 1,800 became Level 1, grade pay 4,200 became Level 6, grade pay 4,600 Level 7, and grade pay 5,400 Level 9 or Level 10 depending on the service, and so on up. The grade pay and pay band articles give the full mapping. It still matters when reading older documents or recruitment rules, which may describe a post by its grade pay even though pay is now fixed by level.

From a level to your take-home

To go from the gross in the table to your actual take-home, three things change it. Your basic may be higher than the entry cell if you have served in the level. Your house rent allowance may be lower if you are not in an X-class city. And the deductions, above all income tax, reduce the gross to the in-hand. The 7th CPC salary calculator handles all three: it takes your level, cell, city, and dearness allowance, adds the allowances, subtracts the deductions, and shows the net, with the option to compare the old and new tax regimes. Each row of the table above links straight into it, set to that level.

Pay level and the 8th CPC

The figures on this page are 7th CPC figures, and they are what is in force. The 8th Central Pay Commission , constituted in November 2025, will review the pay structure and may redesign the levels, revise the entry basic of each, or change how many levels there are, but it has not reported, so no revised level-wise salary exists yet.

Any “8th CPC salary by level” chart circulating now is a projection built on an assumed fitment factor, not an official figure. The 8th CPC salary calculator makes that explicit by asking you to choose the factor rather than presenting one as decided, and the 7th vs 8th Pay Commission comparison separates what is decided from what is only demanded or projected. A common mistake is to multiply the entry basics in the table above by a rumoured factor such as 2.86 and present the result as the 8th CPC salary; the true revised basic depends on a fitment factor the Commission has not set, and even then the dearness allowance is reset at the changeover, so the new basic is not simply added to the current dearness allowance.

Until the 8th CPC reports and the government notifies revised rules, the levels and the entry basics in the table continue to govern every central government salary, with the dearness allowance revised twice a year on top. The table is current in another sense too: it computes the dearness allowance and the gross from the live rate in the data, so when the dearness allowance moves from 60 to a projected 63 per cent at the next revision, the dearness allowance column and the gross rise with it.

See also

• Pay matrix
• 7th CPC salary calculator
• Take-home salary
• 7th Central Pay Commission
• Dearness allowance
• House rent allowance
• Transport allowance
• Central government jobs
• Grade pay
• Central government employees in India

External references

• Department of Expenditure, Ministry of Finance
• 7th Central Pay Commission report