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NPS Calculator

Project your National Pension System (NPS) corpus and monthly pension, compare NPS against the Unified Pension Scheme (UPS) if you're a government employee, and compare NPS Pension Fund Manager performance — all in one place.

What Is NPS (National Pension System)?

The National Pension System (NPS) is a voluntary, market-linked retirement savings scheme regulated by the Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA) — the Indian government body responsible for pensions, similar to how SEBI regulates mutual funds. Every rupee you contribute is invested by a Pension Fund Manager (PFM) of your choice across a mix of equity, corporate bonds, government securities and (for a small allocation) alternative assets, and grows until you retire. It was originally mandatory for central government employees who joined after 1 January 2004, and was later opened up to all Indian citizens, including private-sector employees and the self-employed, under what PFRDA calls the "All Citizens Model."

How Does This NPS Calculator Work?

This calculator projects your corpus using your monthly contribution (plus your employer's, if any), compounded monthly at your assumed rate of return until your chosen retirement age. At exit, the current PFRDA rule requires a minimum share of that corpus to be used to buy an annuity — a product that pays you a fixed monthly income for life, similar in concept to the annuity products covered on our Annuity Deposit Scheme Calculator but sold by IRDAI-regulated life insurers rather than banks. The rest can be withdrawn as a lump sum. Because actual NPS returns depend on markets and your own fund choices, treat every figure here as an informed projection based on your assumptions, not a guarantee — this is exactly why the calculator lets you adjust the expected return and annuity rate rather than hard-coding one number.

NPS for Government Employees: Should You Choose NPS or UPS?

If you're a central government employee, the biggest recent change to plan around is the Unified Pension Scheme (UPS), which took effect on 1 April 2025. Unlike NPS, where your final pension depends on market returns, UPS is a defined-benefit-style guarantee layered on top of the same NPS-style contribution structure: you contribute 10% of basic pay + DA, and the government contributes 18.5% (more than the standard 14% under plain NPS). In return, UPS guarantees a monthly pension equal to 50% of your average basic pay over your last 12 months of service, provided you complete at least 25 years of qualifying service — with a proportionately lower pension (subject to a ₹10,000/month floor) for 10-25 years of service. It also guarantees a family pension at 60% of your pension, and a lump sum at retirement equal to one-tenth of your final month's pay+DA for every six months of completed service, capped at 16.5 times your final emoluments or ₹25 lakh, whichever is lower — separate from and without reducing your guaranteed pension.

The trade-off is straightforward: UPS gives you certainty, NPS gives you market-linked growth potential and a bigger lump sum, with no ceiling on the upside if your chosen fund performs well. The 'NPS vs UPS' tab above runs both calculations side by side using your own numbers so you can see which is more likely to suit you. One important, easy-to-miss timing detail: the window for existing central government employees to opt into UPS closed on 30 September 2025; new central government employees joining on or after 1 April 2025 can still choose UPS at the time of joining, and several state governments have separately begun considering or rolling out similar schemes for their own employees.

NPS Tax Benefits for FY 2026-27

The 80CCD(2) employer-contribution deduction sits outside the ₹1.5 lakh 80CCE limit in both regimes, which is why it's often called the only meaningful NPS-related deduction still available if you've moved to the new tax regime — and it's a genuinely valuable one if your employer offers it, since it effectively increases your take-home benefit without touching your own 80C/80CCE room.

Does It Matter Which Bank You Use — SBI, HDFC or Post Office?

Searches like "NPS calculator SBI" or "NPS calculator HDFC" usually come from a common mix-up between two different roles in the NPS structure. SBI, HDFC Bank, India Post and dozens of other banks and intermediaries act as Points of Presence (POPs) — they're simply where you walk in (or log in) to open and service your NPS account. The entity that actually invests your contributions is a separate Pension Fund Manager (PFM) that you choose yourself when you register, such as SBI Pension Fund, HDFC Pension Management, UTI Retirement Solutions, ICICI Prudential Pension Fund, Kotak Mahindra Pension Fund, Tata Pension Management, Aditya Birla Sun Life Pension, Axis Pension Fund, Max Life Pension Fund or DSP Pension Fund. You can open your account through one bank and still choose any PFM you like, and PFRDA allows you to switch your PFM up to once a year if you're unhappy with performance.

Because of this, the underlying maths in this calculator is identical no matter which bank you used to open your account — what actually changes your outcome is which PFM you picked and how their Scheme E (equity), C (corporate bonds) and G (government securities) funds performed. Based on 2026 performance data across the 11 PFMs currently approved by PFRDA, here's how the leading names compared on their equity (Scheme E) returns:

ICICI Prudential Pension Fund (16.40% over 5 years) and HDFC Pension Management (15.58% over 5 years) also performed strongly. No single PFM leads across every time frame, which is exactly why comparing performance over several horizons — not just the most recent year — matters more than chasing whichever name is trending. Use the "Compare Fund Managers" tab above to see roughly how much a sustained few percentage points of difference in returns can compound into over your investing horizon.

NPS Exit and Withdrawal Rules (2026)

PFRDA revised NPS exit rules in 2026 to give subscribers more flexibility, but it's important to understand a gap that has opened up between the investment rule and the tax rule. Non-government subscribers can now withdraw up to 80% of their corpus as a lump sum at exit (minimum 20% must still go into an annuity) — up from the earlier 60% limit. Government employees remain at a maximum 60% lump sum with a minimum 40% annuitized. However, only 60% of your total corpus is tax-free under current income tax law regardless of how much you're now allowed to withdraw as a lump sum — any amount you withdraw between 60% and 80% (if you're a non-government subscriber choosing the higher limit) is taxed at your income slab rate, because the Income Tax Act itself hasn't yet been updated to match PFRDA's revised withdrawal rule. If your total corpus is ₹8 lakh or less, you can withdraw the full amount with no mandatory annuity purchase at all; for a corpus between ₹8-12 lakh, up to ₹6 lakh can be taken as a lump sum with the remainder paid out via Systematic Unit Redemption over a minimum of 6 years. Subscribers who exit before 60 (premature exit) must still annuitize at least 80% of the corpus, unless the total corpus is ₹5 lakh or less, in which case full withdrawal is allowed. Non-government subscribers can also now exit after 15 years of subscription or at age 60, whichever comes first, and deferment of the NPS account is allowed up to age 85.

NPS Tier 1 vs Tier 2: Which Account Do You Need?

Most people calculating "how much pension will I get from NPS" are really asking about Tier 1 — it's the account this calculator's Tab 1 and Tab 2 project. Tier 2 is a useful low-cost, liquid investment option once your Tier 1 and emergency fund (see our Emergency Fund Calculator) are already in place, but it shouldn't be confused with your actual retirement corpus.

Common Mistakes When Using an NPS Calculator

The most common mistake is assuming NPS has a fixed "interest rate" the way a PPF or SCSS does — it doesn't; your return depends entirely on your asset allocation and chosen PFM's actual performance, which is why this calculator asks you to set your own assumed return rather than presenting one fixed number as fact. The second is ignoring employer contributions when you have them — for salaried employees with an employer NPS benefit, leaving that field at zero understates your real projected corpus by a large margin, since employer contributions can match or exceed your own. The third, specific to government employees, is projecting only the NPS pension in isolation without comparing it to the UPS guarantee you may be entitled to — since 2025, that comparison is not optional if you want an accurate retirement picture. The fourth is picking a Pension Fund Manager once and never reviewing it — PFRDA allows a free annual PFM switch, and the leaderboard in the comparison table above shows performance gaps wide enough to be worth checking periodically.

Frequently Asked Questions

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About Invest Know

Invest Know builds free, regulator-aligned financial calculators for India using real, cited data — never static guesses. Rates, PFM performance figures and scheme rules on this page reflect publicly available information as of September 2026 and are for illustration only, not investment or tax advice. Please verify current rates and rules on the official PFRDA website before making decisions. Read more on our About Us page.