CTC to in-hand salary calculator

Cost to Company is the number on your offer letter, and it's almost never the number that lands in your bank account. This calculator exists because that gap confuses almost everyone the first time they see a payslip, and because the reasons for it are simple once you see them broken down — they're just usually hidden inside one lump-sum figure.

Where the gap comes from

Start with your CTC. Some of it — the employer's own contribution to your provident fund, and a provision your employer sets aside for a future gratuity payout — never reaches you as cash. It's real money your employer is spending on you, but it doesn't show up on a payslip as pay. What's left after subtracting those two is your gross salary: the number that's actually split into basic pay, HRA, and a special allowance that soaks up whatever's left over.

From gross salary, three more things come out before you see a rupee: your own contribution to provident fund (a mandatory saving, not a tax), a small state-level professional tax, and income tax. What survives all of that is your take-home — the number this calculator puts at the top, updating as you type.

Why the defaults might not match your offer letter

Every employer splits CTC differently. This calculator defaults to a 40% basic salary and 50% HRA — common, reasonable starting points — but your actual offer letter might use 35%, or 45%, or structure allowances completely differently. That's exactly why every one of these percentages is editable under "Adjust assumptions," rather than fixed. If your payslip gives you exact figures, use them instead of the defaults and this becomes a precise calculation, not an estimate.

The same goes for provident fund. Some employers contribute 12% of your entire basic salary; others cap contributions at 12% of a ₹15,000 statutory wage ceiling, regardless of how much higher your actual basic salary is. Both are legal, both are common, and they produce meaningfully different take-home numbers at higher salaries — check your payslip or ask HR if you're not sure which applies to you.

Old regime or new regime

The new tax regime is the default here because it's the default in law since FY 2023-24, and it wins for most people who don't have large deductions to claim. But it disallows HRA exemption, Section 80C investments, and home loan interest entirely — if you have substantial rent or investments, the old regime can still come out ahead. Toggle between them in "Adjust assumptions" and watch the take-home figure move; that's a more reliable answer than any general rule, because it's specific to your actual numbers.

If you're on the old regime, your age matters too — the basic exemption before any tax applies is higher for senior citizens (60-79) and higher still for super senior citizens (80+). That's a separate setting from everything else here, and it only shows up once you switch to the old regime, since the new regime doesn't vary by age at all.

Employer type, and a limit almost no calculator checks

If your employer contributes to your NPS account, how much of that is tax-free depends on both your regime and whether you work for a private company or the government — private-sector employees get a smaller deduction cap under the old regime specifically, a rule Budget 2024 introduced to nudge people toward the new regime. Anything your employer contributes above that cap, or above a separate ₹7,50,000 aggregate ceiling across provident fund and NPS combined, gets added back into your taxable income rather than quietly ignored — this calculator does that add-back correctly, which matters mainly if your basic salary is high enough for it to bite.

What this estimate can't know

It doesn't know about a joining bonus, an annual bonus, or ESOPs — those are usually taxed separately from your fixed monthly pay, in whichever month they're actually paid out. It doesn't know your exact HRA exemption either, since that depends on the rent you actually pay and the city you live in — the dedicated HRA calculator on this site handles that calculation properly. And it can't account for company-specific quirks: some employers add a meal allowance, some don't offer HRA at all and fold everything into a consolidated allowance instead. Treat this as a well-grounded estimate of your fixed salary, not a replacement for your actual payslip.