LPA to monthly salary calculator with in-hand breakdown

The short answer: what LPA leaves out of your month

A package of 12 LPA pays a monthly gross of Rs 1,00,000 and, under the model printed in full on this page, an estimated Rs 88,276 in hand each month. The Rs 11,724 gap is not a trick and not an error. Employer provident fund and gratuity sit inside the CTC without ever becoming monthly cash, and employee provident fund, professional tax, and income tax leave the gross before the bank sees a rupee.

One warning governs every number here: in-hand pay is an estimate, and it varies by tax regime, salary structure, provident fund basis, and state professional tax. This page prints its whole model so you can see which assumption moves your figure, change that assumption in the tool, and read the answer as a range between the two regime estimates rather than as a promise. Your first payslip remains the only exact document.

The full estimation model and its assumptions

The calculator runs one stated model, and the model stands here in full so any reader can reproduce any figure on this page with a pencil.

• Cost to company (CTC) is the LPA figure times Rs 1,00,000. Basic salary defaults to 40 percent of CTC and is editable, because offer letters set it at 40 or 50 percent most often.
• Employer provident fund and employee provident fund each run at 12 percent of basic. A second basis caps each side at the Rs 15,000 monthly wage ceiling, Rs 1,800 per month per side, and the tool offers both.
• Gratuity accrues at 4.81 percent of basic. Gratuity is a deferred benefit under the Payment of Gratuity Act 1972, paid at exit after the service conditions are met, and it never appears as monthly cash.
• Taxable salary under the new regime equals CTC minus employer provident fund, minus gratuity, minus the Rs 75,000 standard deduction for salaried taxpayers.
• Income tax follows the new regime slabs for FY 2025-26: nil up to Rs 4 lakh, 5 percent from Rs 4 to 8 lakh, 10 percent from Rs 8 to 12 lakh, 15 percent from Rs 12 to 16 lakh, 20 percent from Rs 16 to 20 lakh, 25 percent from Rs 20 to 24 lakh, and 30 percent above Rs 24 lakh. The Section 87A rebate then removes up to Rs 60,000 of tax when taxable income stands at or below Rs 12,75,000, and 4 percent health and education cess applies on the tax that remains.
• Professional tax defaults to Rs 2,400 a year and is editable, because state governments levy it at different rates and several states levy none.
• Variable pay and joining bonuses are excluded. Both arrive yearly, conditionally, or once, and a monthly estimate that includes them flatters eleven months out of twelve.

The old regime selector runs the same structure with the Rs 50,000 standard deduction, the older slab ladder, and a rebate of up to Rs 12,500 at taxable income up to Rs 5,00,000, and it counts no HRA or Section 80C deductions. That omission is stated rather than hidden: the old regime figure here is a floor for a reader who claims deductions, and the comparison article below runs the deduction case properly.

Slab figures and rebate limits change with Finance Acts. This page carries the FY 2025-26 position and is re-checked against the Income Tax Department at every budget update, and the same discipline applies to the EPF wage ceiling against the Employees' Provident Fund Organisation.

LPA quick table: gross and estimated in-hand

The table below runs common packages through the model at the defaults: basic at 40 percent of CTC, provident fund at 12 percent of basic on both sides, gratuity at 4.81 percent of basic, professional tax at Rs 2,400, and the new regime for FY 2025-26. Each in-hand figure is an estimate under those stated assumptions, and your structure can move it.

Two stretches of the table teach the shape of the system. From 3 to 12 LPA the model shows nil income tax, because the standard deduction and the Section 87A rebate absorb the computed tax at those levels. From 15 LPA upward, tax takes a growing share of each additional lakh, which is why a raise negotiated in annual figures always lands smaller in the month than the headline promises.

Deduction anatomy: where each rupee of CTC goes

The table below names every component in the model, states what it is, and states when the employee actually sees the money. Most offer-letter confusion dies in this table, because each component fails to be monthly cash for a different, legitimate reason.

Two lines deserve a second look. Employer PF is real compensation that lives in a retirement account rather than a salary account, and gratuity is real in the same deferred way. The honest quarrel is never that these lines exist. The quarrel is with reading the total as monthly cash.

How salary structure alone moves the monthly figure

Two offers can carry one CTC and pay different monthly amounts, because basic salary anchors both provident fund and gratuity. At 12 LPA with basic at 40 percent, the model estimates Rs 88,276 in hand. Raise basic to 50 percent and the PF and gratuity lines grow with it: basic becomes Rs 6,00,000, each PF side becomes Rs 72,000, gratuity becomes Rs 28,860, taxable income becomes Rs 10,24,140 with tax still absorbed by the rebate, and estimated in-hand falls to Rs 85,395 a month. The higher-basic structure pays less each month and retires richer, which is a trade, not a trick, and it is invisible until someone runs both structures through the same model.

Each candle spans the same package under the two regime models of this page, old regime at the low end and new regime at the high end, with no HRA or 80C deductions counted on the old side. Regime choice is the widest honest range in the whole answer, wider than the PF ceiling choice at mid-range packages, and it is the reason this page refuses to print one unqualified monthly figure for any package.

Three packages worked in full

At 6 LPA, basic at 40 percent is Rs 2,40,000. Each provident fund side takes Rs 28,800, gratuity takes Rs 11,544, and taxable salary settles at Rs 4,84,656 after the Rs 75,000 standard deduction. The slab tax on that figure is fully absorbed by the Section 87A rebate, so income tax is nil. The year pays Rs 5,28,456 in hand, Rs 44,038 a month, against a monthly gross of Rs 50,000.

At 12 LPA, basic is Rs 4,80,000, each PF side takes Rs 57,600, and gratuity takes Rs 23,088. Taxable salary is Rs 10,44,312. The slab computation produces tax, and the rebate removes it entirely at this income, so the year pays Rs 10,59,312, which is Rs 88,276 a month. The rebate rule, printed beside the result, is the whole surprise.

At 24 LPA, basic is Rs 9,60,000, each PF side takes Rs 1,15,200, and gratuity takes Rs 46,176. Taxable salary is Rs 21,63,624, above the rebate limit, so slab tax of Rs 2,40,906 stands, plus 4 percent cess, for a tax line of Rs 2,50,542. The year pays Rs 18,70,482, Rs 1,55,874 a month, against a gross of Rs 2,00,000. At this height the tax line, not the provident fund, is the largest single reason the month differs from the headline.

Why I built this calculator

My younger cousin received his first offer from a Bengaluru software company at 9 LPA and announced at home that he would earn Rs 75,000 a month. The celebration was sincere and the arithmetic was innocent: nine lakh divided by twelve is indeed 75,000, and nobody at the table had any reason to suspect the offer letter of containing a second, quieter document.

The annexure was that document. Inside the CTC sat employer provident fund, a gratuity line, and a variable component, each one legitimate, each one invisible in the headline. The real monthly figure was far lower than the announced one, and the family felt misled by a letter that had hidden nothing. The letter had structured everything. Structure was the whole story, and at that table, nobody could read it.

I built this calculator that weekend, breakdown table first and headline number second. Every figure it prints can be traced to a named line, every assumption sits under the result in plain words, and the range between the two regime estimates stays visible because a family deserves the honest width of the answer. The next offer in this family will be read properly before it is celebrated.

My appointment letter and my bank account were both honest. They were just never counting the same thing. I learned that at my own first job at a Multan agency years before freelancing, where a monthly figure I could not reconcile with my appointment letter taught me the same lesson my cousin later learned in Bengaluru, and I have checked every offer letter against its annexure ever since. The currencies and the tax codes differ across the border. The gap between the letter and the account does not.

More guides on offers and payslips

• CTC vs in-hand salary: where the difference quietly goes
• What 6 LPA really pays every month, line by line
• What 12 LPA really pays every month under the new regime
• The provident fund lines on your payslip, decoded
• New regime or old regime at 10 LPA: the same salary, both answers
• Variable pay, performance bonuses and the joining bonus inside your CTC
• Comparing two offers when one quotes LPA and the other quotes monthly, across two countries
• Gratuity: the CTC line you receive years later
• Professional tax and the small deductions that change by state
• Negotiating in LPA: what a one lakh raise does to your month

The lakh unit itself, and its place beside million and crore, is set out on the lakh to million converter, and savings built from a salary meet their own annual test on the gold below nisab, cash above nisab guide.