Free tool · PhD planning
Fellowship stipend calculator
Your monthly fellowship, HRA, yearly total and tenure total, with the official document for every amount.
This calculator shows what a PhD fellowship pays you in India. Pick your scheme, your year and where you live. You get the monthly fellowship, the HRA, the monthly and yearly totals, the yearly contingency or research grant, and the total over the whole tenure. It covers the UGC and CSIR JRF, the DST INSPIRE Fellowship, the PMRF and the ICSSR doctoral fellowship.
For example, a CSIR fellow in year 3 gets ₹42,000 a month as an SRF. If the institution pays HRA at 24%, that adds ₹10,080, for ₹52,080 a month. Every amount comes from the funding agency’s own document, and we name it with its date under each result.
Which city class am I in?
HRA classes come from the Department of Expenditure’s list for Central Government employees. The annexure to its office memorandum of 7 July 2017 names these eight urban areas as class X:
Delhi, Greater Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Pune and Ahmedabad.
Class Y is a longer list of large cities. In the south it includes Coimbatore, Madurai, Tiruchirappalli, Salem, Tiruppur and Erode in Tamil Nadu, Kochi, Thiruvananthapuram, Kozhikode, Thrissur, Malappuram, Kannur and Kollam in Kerala, and Mysore, Mangalore, Hubli-Dharwad, Belgaum and Gulbarga in Karnataka. Elsewhere it includes cities such as Lucknow, Jaipur, Nagpur, Patna, Bhopal, Chandigarh and Bhubaneswar.
Every city or town not named as X or Y is class Z. Read the full list in the memorandum, because a few places have special arrangements set out there. What counts is where your host institution is, not where your family lives.
Method
How this tool works
The calculator holds the amounts below. Each one comes from an official document we opened on 28 September 2026. The JRF and SRF rates were last revised by the Department of Science and Technology’s office memorandum of 26 June 2023. It set ₹37,000 for a JRF and ₹42,000 for an SRF from 1 January 2023, for research fellows on programmes funded by the Central Government. UGC, CSIR and INSPIRE all show those rates.
| Fellowship | Monthly amount | Yearly grant | Tenure | HRA | Official source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UGC NET-JRF | JRF ₹37,000 for 2 years; SRF ₹42,000 after that | Contingency: sciences ₹12,000 (JRF), ₹25,000 (SRF); humanities and social sciences ₹10,000 (JRF), ₹20,500 (SRF) | 5 years or thesis submission, if earlier | Yes, unless you live in a hostel | UGC scheme page (shows no memorandum date; checked 28 September 2026) |
| CSIR JRF (CSIR-UGC NET) | JRF ₹37,000 for 2 years; SRF ₹42,000 from year 3 | Contingency ₹20,000 | JRF and SRF together up to 5 years | Yes, unless you live in a hostel | CSIR-HRDG revised guidelines, from 1 March 2023 |
| DST INSPIRE Fellowship | JRF ₹37,000; SRF ₹42,000 | Contingency up to ₹20,000 | Up to 5 years, or until the viva, if earlier | Yes, by the host institution’s location | INSPIRE Fellowship guidelines (from April 2026), applying the DST memorandum of 26 June 2023 |
| PMRF | ₹70,000 in years 1–2, ₹75,000 in year 3, ₹80,000 in years 4–5 | Research grant ₹2,00,000 | Up to 5 years | Not added to the PMRF amount | PMRF guideline document, 27 July 2026 |
| ICSSR full-term doctoral | ₹20,000 | Contingency ₹20,000 | 2 years | Not provided | ICSSR guidelines 2025–26, clause 5.1 |
For the year you choose, the tool takes the monthly amount for your stage. HRA is that amount times the rate you enter, rounded to the rupee. The yearly total is twelve months of fellowship and HRA. The contingency or research grant is shown on its own, because it pays for research costs through your institution and doesn’t reach your bank account as pay.
The tenure total adds every year up to the end of the scheme. It assumes you move to SRF after two years, or after three if you tick the box. It also assumes the HRA rate stays the same. The year-by-year table under the result shows each step.
Why you type the HRA rate yourself
The DST memorandum says fellows in a hostel get no HRA. Where there’s no hostel place, HRA is paid “as per Central Government norms applicable in the city/location where they are working”, as a percentage of the fellowship. CSIR says HRA follows the host institution’s rules and must never exceed the Central Government rate. The UGC JRF guidelines tie it to the Government of India’s city classes.
The Central Government rate itself has moved in steps. The Department of Expenditure’s memorandum of 7 July 2017 set HRA at 24%, 16% and 8% for X, Y and Z cities. It said these would rise to 27%, 18% and 9% when dearness allowance crosses 25%, and to 30%, 20% and 10% when it crosses 50%. A memorandum of 12 March 2024 raised dearness allowance to 50% from 1 January 2024. None of the fellowship documents says which step applies to fellows today. So we don’t guess. Ask your accounts section what they pay and type it in.
Limits
What this tool can’t do
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
How much is the JRF fellowship now?
₹37,000 a month for the first two years, and ₹42,000 a month as an SRF after that. UGC, CSIR and the DST INSPIRE Fellowship all use these rates. They came in with the DST office memorandum of 26 June 2023, effective from 1 January 2023. HRA and the yearly contingency grant come on top.
Do I get HRA if I live in the hostel?
No. The DST memorandum says fellows living in a hostel provided by the institution aren’t entitled to HRA. CSIR and UGC say the same. Under UGC’s guidelines, a fellow in the hostel can draw the hostel fees only, not mess, electricity or water charges. If no hostel place is available, you can get HRA for the city where your institution is.
What HRA percentage should I enter?
The rate your institution actually pays. The Central Government steps are 24%, 27% and 30% for X cities, 16%, 18% and 20% for Y cities, and 8%, 9% and 10% for Z cities. Institutions don’t all apply the same step to fellows, and the fellowship documents don’t name one. Your accounts section or a senior scholar’s pay slip will tell you.
When do I move from JRF to SRF?
After two years, if an expert committee at your institution finds your progress satisfactory. CSIR assesses you through an interview with a committee of your guide, your head of department and an outside expert. If the first assessment isn’t cleared, UGC gives one more year as JRF before a second look. INSPIRE fellows can be assessed after one year if they have a first-author paper in an SCI-indexed journal.
Does PMRF include HRA?
The PMRF guideline document of 27 July 2026 gives a pay matrix of ₹70,000 to ₹80,000 a month and a research grant of ₹2 lakh a year. It doesn’t add HRA to that. It mentions HRA only for a fellow whose fellowship is cut to the JRF/SRF level after a review.
Why does the ICSSR fellowship show only two years?
Because the ICSSR full-term doctoral fellowship runs for two years. It pays ₹20,000 a month plus ₹20,000 a year for contingency, under clause 5.1 of the 2025–26 guidelines. The first award letter covers one year, and the second depends on your progress.
Evidence
Sources
- DST Office Memorandum No. DST/PCPM/Z-06/2022, 26 June 2023: revised JRF, SRF and RA emoluments from 1 January 2023, and HRA rule (PDF)
- UGC: Junior Research Fellowship in Science, Humanities and Social Sciences (checked 28 September 2026)
- UGC: XII Plan guidelines for the JRF scheme, clause 4 (HRA and hostel) and the JRF-to-SRF assessment (PDF)
- CSIR-HRDG: revised JRF (CSIR-UGC NET) guidelines, with effect from 1 March 2023
- DST: INSPIRE Fellowship post-offer implementation guidelines, applicable from April 2026 (PDF)
- DST: INSPIRE guidelines for upgradation from JRF to SRF (PDF)
- PMRF overall guideline document, 27 July 2026, section 2.1 (PDF)
- ICSSR: Guidelines, Doctoral Fellowships 2025–26 (PDF)
- Department of Expenditure OM No. 2/5/2017-E.II(B), 7 July 2017: HRA rates and list of X and Y cities (PDF)
- Department of Expenditure OM No. 1/1/2024-E.II(B), 12 March 2024: dearness allowance at 50% from 1 January 2024 (PDF)
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