EPF Calculator

The Employees' Provident Fund is the default retirement savings vehicle for salaried India, and because contributions are automatic and invisible in the monthly payslip, most people never actually project what it will become. That's a shame — EPF is quietly one of the better-performing, government-backed instruments available, and seeing the compounding at work is motivating on its own.

The mechanics: you contribute 12% of your basic salary every month, matched by your employer's 12% — except of the employer's share, 8.33% is diverted to the Employees' Pension Scheme (EPS) rather than your EPF account, so only 3.67% of the employer's contribution actually reaches your PF balance. Combined with your own 12%, that's 15.67% of basic flowing into EPF each month, compounding monthly at the interest rate the EPFO announces annually (recently around 8.25%).

This calculator projects your corpus to retirement, stepping your basic salary up each year by your expected raise percentage and compounding contributions monthly. Two levers matter most for the final number: starting early (the compounding has more years to work) and your basic salary's actual growth rate, which most people underestimate over a full career. Note that EPF withdrawal before 5 years of continuous service is taxable, and partial withdrawals for specific purposes (medical, housing, marriage) are permitted under EPFO rules but aren't modelled here.