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NPS Calculator

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The National Pension System is not just a savings pot, and the number most people want from it is not the balance. At exit the corpus splits: at least 40% must buy an annuity, and only the rest may be taken as cash. This calculator projects the corpus from your contributions, then applies that split so you can see the lump sum and the monthly pension side by side.

yrs

NPS is open from 18 to 70.

yrs

60 is the normal exit; you may continue to 75.

Your own Tier I contribution.

Leave blank if you are opening the account now.

%

An assumption. NPS is market-linked and declares no rate.

%

At least 40% must buy an annuity.

%

The annual rate the insurer is assumed to pay on the annuity purchase price. Quotes vary by scheme and by whether the money returns to your nominee.

How to use the nps calculator

  1. 1Enter your current age and the age you plan to exit — 60 is the normal exit, and you may continue to 75.
  2. 2Enter your monthly Tier I contribution, and any balance the account already holds.
  3. 3Set the return you expect on the fund. NPS is market-linked, so this is an assumption rather than a declared rate.
  4. 4Set the share of the corpus that will buy an annuity. The minimum is 40%; a higher share means a larger pension and a smaller lump sum.
  5. 5Set the annuity rate — the annual rate you expect an insurer to pay on the purchase price — then press Project my NPS.

Examples

Starting at thirty

Input
Age 30 to 60, ₹5,000 a month, 10% expected return, 40% annuity at 6%
Result
Corpus about ₹1.14 crore — roughly ₹68.4 lakh as cash and a pension of about ₹22,800 a month

Total contributions are ₹18 lakh, so more than four-fifths of the corpus is growth. Thirty years is what does that, not the contribution.

The cost of starting ten years later

Input
Age 40 to 60, same ₹5,000 a month and the same rates
Result
Corpus about ₹38.3 lakh — a pension of about ₹7,660 a month

Two-thirds of the contributions produce barely a third of the corpus. The last decade before retirement compounds a balance that took the first two decades to build.

Taking more pension instead of cash

Input
The first example, with the annuity share raised from 40% to 100%
Result
No lump sum, and a pension of about ₹57,000 a month

The trade is fully reversible only before you buy: once an annuity is purchased, the capital is generally gone for good.

About the nps calculator

The two rates that decide the outcome, and only one is about investing

Every projection here rests on two assumptions doing very different jobs. The expected return governs how the corpus grows over decades, and it is the one people argue about. The annuity rate governs how much monthly income that corpus is converted into on a single day, and it is the one people forget.

The second deserves more attention than it gets. A corpus that grows 1% a year faster over thirty years is transformative; an annuity rate 1% higher at retirement is close to a 15% difference in pension income for life. You have some influence over the first through your allocation choices, and essentially none over the second, because it is set by interest rates on the day you buy.

The practical response is not to guess better. It is to notice that the pension figure carries wider uncertainty than the corpus figure, and to plan around the corpus and its cash portion — which you can see and control — rather than treating a projected monthly pension as a number to build a budget on.

Why the last decade contributes more than the first two

Compound growth is back-loaded, and the effect is more extreme than it feels. In the first worked example above, the account is still under half its final value at the start of its twenty-fourth year: the last six years build as much as the first twenty-four did. The money contributed in year one has thirty years to compound; the money contributed in year twenty-nine has one.

This is what makes the ten-year delay in the second example so expensive. Nothing about the contribution changes — the same ₹5,000 a month, the same assumed return — yet the outcome falls by roughly two-thirds, because the missing decade is the one that would have been compounding underneath everything that followed.

It also explains why increasing a contribution late has limited effect, while increasing it early has a large one, and why the yearly table on this page is worth expanding. Watching the balance line pull away from the contributions line tells you more about how the scheme behaves than any single headline figure does.

What this projection cannot know

A single unchanging return applied for thirty years is a modelling convenience, not a description of any market. Real sequences matter: a poor decade early and a strong one late produce a different outcome from the reverse, even when the average is identical. Scheme charges, though low, are not modelled here either, and nor is any change to contribution limits, exit rules or tax treatment over a horizon this long.

Read the result as the shape of a decision rather than a forecast of your account balance. It answers questions like 'does doubling my contribution meaningfully change the pension' and 'how much does a later start cost' reliably, because those comparisons hold under most assumptions. It does not answer 'what will I have in 2056', and no calculator can.

Frequently asked questions

Why must 40% of the corpus buy an annuity?
Because NPS is a pension scheme rather than a savings account, and the rule is what makes it one. Annuitising a minimum share converts part of the corpus into an income that cannot be exhausted by living longer than expected, which is the specific risk a pension exists to cover. The remainder is available as a lump sum, and this calculator lets you model any share from 40% to 100% because the choice above the floor is genuinely yours. Two exceptions are worth knowing about and are not modelled here: a corpus below a threshold set by the regulator may be withdrawn in full with no annuity at all, and an exit before the normal retirement age reverses the split, requiring far more of the balance to be annuitised. Both thresholds have changed before, so check the current rules with the scheme rather than assuming these.
What return should I assume?
There is no correct answer, and that is the honest one. NPS returns depend on your asset allocation between equity, corporate bonds and government securities, and on the fund manager you pick — an equity-heavy allocation has historically been more volatile and higher-returning than a gilt-heavy one. Rather than adopting a single confident figure, run the projection two or three times across a range and look at how wide the results are. The spread is the useful output.
What is an annuity rate, and why does it matter so much?
It is the annual income an insurer will pay per rupee of purchase price, quoted when you retire. It varies by annuity type — one that returns the purchase price to your nominee pays less than one that does not — and it moves with prevailing interest rates, which are impossible to forecast decades ahead. Two people with identical corpuses retiring five years apart can receive materially different pensions for this reason alone.
Does this include tax?
No. The projection is entirely pre-tax and models no deduction on the way in or the way out. NPS has its own treatment of contributions, of the lump sum and of pension income, and it has changed more than once. Check the current position with a qualified adviser or the scheme's own documentation before making a decision that depends on it.
How does this differ from the retirement calculator on this site?
The retirement calculator compares a projected corpus against the corpus your target income would require, whatever you save into. This one models the specific mechanics of a single scheme: monthly contributions, the mandatory annuity split at exit, and the pension the annuity produces. Use this to understand what an NPS account will actually pay you, and the retirement calculator to work out whether that is enough.

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