EPF Calculator
Enter your monthly basic salary, age and expected annual increment to project your EPF balance at retirement — with employee and employer contributions and compound interest, month by month.
How EPF works
The Employees' Provident Fund (EPF) is a mandatory retirement scheme for salaried employees in organisations with 20 or more staff, administered by the Employees' Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO). It bundles three things into one of the most reliable wealth-builders available to Indian workers: a forced monthly saving, an employer top-up, and guaranteed compounding. Every month both you and your employer pay a fixed share of your basic salary plus dearness allowance (DA) into the fund, and the running balance earns interest declared each year by the EPFO — currently 8.25% p.a. and fully tax-free within limits.
How your EPF contribution is split
You contribute 12% of basic + DA, and your employer matches it with another 12%. The catch is that the employer's half is not added entirely to your provident fund — a slice is diverted to the Employees' Pension Scheme (EPS). EPS takes 8.33% of your pensionable salary, but that salary is capped at ₹15,000 a month, so the EPS contribution never exceeds about ₹1,250. Everything left over lands in your EPF. Here is how a ₹30,000 basic salary splits each month:
| Contribution | Rate and base | Monthly on ₹30,000 basic |
|---|---|---|
| Your EPF share (employee) | 12% of basic + DA | ₹3,600 |
| Employer to EPS (pension) | 8.33% of ₹15,000, capped | ₹1,250 |
| Employer to EPF | Employer's 12% minus EPS | ₹2,350 |
| Added to EPF each month | Your share + employer EPF | ₹5,950 |
So on a ₹30,000 basic, ₹5,950 flows into your provident fund every month while ₹1,250 builds your EPS pension. Because EPS is fixed once your salary crosses ₹15,000, employees on higher pay see almost all of the employer's 12% credited to EPF rather than pension.
Full basic vs the ₹15,000 wage ceiling
The statutory wage ceiling for EPF is ₹15,000 a month. By law an employer only has to contribute 12% on the first ₹15,000 of basic + DA, which caps the mandatory PF at ₹1,800 (employee) plus ₹550 (employer EPF) a month. Many companies — especially smaller ones — restrict PF to this ceiling, so a ₹50,000-basic employee still sees only ₹1,800 going in from each side. Larger and more generous employers instead contribute on your full basic, which for the same ₹50,000 basic means ₹6,000 from each side and a far bigger corpus. Use the Contribution Basis selector above to match whichever your payslip shows — it can change the projected corpus several times over, so it is the single most important input to get right.
A worked example: ₹30,000 basic to retirement
Take the calculator's default — ₹30,000 basic at age 30, a 5% annual increment, retiring at 58, with the 8.25% rate held constant. Over those 28 years:
- Your own contributions total about ₹25.2 lakh.
- Your employer's EPF contributions add roughly ₹21 lakh.
- Compound interest earns close to ₹90 lakh.
- The corpus at 58 works out to about ₹1.36 crore.
Nearly two-thirds of the final corpus is interest you never contributed a rupee towards — the clearest illustration of why leaving EPF untouched for decades matters. To see what that ₹1.36 crore will actually buy after years of rising prices, run it through the Inflation Calculator.
VPF: contributing beyond 12%
If you want to save more at the same rate, the Voluntary Provident Fund (VPF) lets you raise your own contribution above the mandatory 12% — up to 100% of basic + DA. VPF money earns the identical 8.25% EPF interest, carries the same sovereign-backed safety, and needs no separate account or paperwork beyond a request to your employer. Your employer's contribution stays fixed at 12%, so VPF is entirely your own top-up. For a conservative saver in a high tax bracket it is one of the strongest fixed-income options available, though the money is locked in on the same terms as the rest of your PF.
Tax on EPF: the ₹2.5 lakh line
EPF enjoys EEE (exempt-exempt-exempt) treatment — contributions, interest and the final maturity are all tax-free — but with one modern caveat. Since FY 2021-22, interest on your own contributions above ₹2.5 lakh in a year is taxable, and it is tracked in a separate account on your passbook. The threshold rises to ₹5 lakh where the employer makes no contribution, as with some government funds. In practice you would need a basic salary of roughly ₹1.7 lakh a month, or heavy VPF top-ups, before your own contribution crosses that line — so the large majority of salaried employees stay fully tax-free. Your contribution also qualifies for Section 80C under the old regime; check the effect on your bill with the Income Tax Calculator.
Withdrawal rules
- Full withdrawal is allowed at retirement (age 55 and above) or after two months of continuous unemployment.
- Partial (advance) withdrawals are permitted for specific needs — buying or building a house, medical treatment, higher education or marriage — each subject to minimum-service and limit conditions.
- Tax-free after 5 years of continuous service. Withdraw earlier and TDS applies: an amount above ₹50,000 taken before five years is typically subject to 10% TDS when your PAN is linked, and higher without it.
- You can submit Form 15G/15H to avoid TDS if your total income for the year is below the taxable limit.
Track everything through your UAN
Your Universal Account Number (UAN) is the permanent ID that links every EPF account across all your employers. Activate it once and you can view your passbook on the EPFO member portal or the UMANG app, confirm that each month's employer credit has actually landed, and merge old accounts when you change jobs. Checking the passbook a few times a year is the simplest way to catch a missing or delayed contribution while it is still easy to fix, and it keeps a running record of exactly how your corpus is building towards retirement.
Wondering how EPF stacks up against other retirement options in India? Model returns with the PPF Calculator and NPS Calculator, estimate your separation payout with the Gratuity Calculator, or read our detailed EPF vs PPF vs NPS comparison.