Free tool, planning and viva
Fellowship stipend calculator
Monthly fellowship, HRA and yearly totals, with sources.
Choose your fellowship and year, and the calculator shows your monthly fellowship, HRA and contingency, with totals for the year and the full tenure.
The list has six national schemes. They are CSIR JRF, UGC NET-JRF for science subjects and for humanities and social science subjects, the DST INSPIRE Fellowship, the Prime Minister’s Research Fellowship and the ICSSR full-term doctoral fellowship. Many scholars are using it to plan the rent before shifting to Bengaluru or Hyderabad. Some use it to cross-check the arrears statement given by accounts section. A few scholars whose SRF upgrade got delayed want to know how much they lose in five years, they also use it.
Which HRA class is my city?
A city’s HRA class is set by the Department of Expenditure, in the list it keeps for Central Government staff. The annexure to its office memorandum dated 7 July 2017 puts eight urban areas in class X:
Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, Delhi, Greater Mumbai, Hyderabad, Kolkata and Pune.
Class Y takes in many more large cities. In Tamil Nadu: Coimbatore, Erode, Madurai, Salem, Tiruchirappalli and Tiruppur. In Kerala: Kannur, Kochi, Kollam, Kozhikode, Malappuram, Thiruvananthapuram and Thrissur. In Karnataka: Belgaum, Gulbarga, Hubli-Dharwad, Mangalore and Mysore. Further north, Bhopal, Bhubaneswar, Chandigarh, Jaipur, Lucknow, Nagpur and Patna are on it too.
If your town is not there in X list or Y list, take it as class Z. For a few areas there is some special arrangement also, better you open the memorandum and see once. The class follows the town your host institution is in, not your home town.
Not sure the answer fits your study? WhatsApp us or call, and we’ll look at it with you.
How the tool works
We took every amount from the official document, and the link for it you will find under the result. We checked every amount with its document in September or October 2026, and the result shows the date for each one.
- CSIR, UGC and INSPIRE fellows get the same rates. In the JRF years it is ₹37,000 a month, and after the upgrade to SRF it becomes ₹42,000 a month. DST fixed these rates in its memorandum of 26 June 2023, and they apply from 1 January 2023.
- The contingency grant is not same in every scheme. For science subjects UGC gives ₹12,000 a year as JRF and ₹25,000 as SRF. In humanities and social sciences the figures are ₹10,000 and ₹20,500. CSIR gives ₹20,000 a year, and INSPIRE allows up to ₹20,000 a year.
- PMRF money goes up with the years. You get ₹70,000 a month in the first and second year, ₹75,000 in the third year and ₹80,000 in the fourth and fifth year. Separately there is a research grant of ₹2,00,000 every year.
- ICSSR gives a consolidated ₹20,000 a month for two years only, with contingency of ₹20,000 per year.
Between two scholars, mostly it is the HRA amount that is different, so we have not tried to guess it in the calculator. As per the official rule, JRF and SRF fellows get HRA at the Central Government rate for that city. But each institution is applying this rule in its own way. That is why we ask you to type the percentage your institution actually pays. If you select hostel accommodation, HRA becomes ₹0, because fellows staying in an institution hostel are not entitled for HRA. The PMRF and ICSSR guidelines do not give any HRA with their amounts.
Take one example. A CSIR JRF in an X-class city, where the institution pays HRA at 24%, gets ₹37,000 plus ₹8,880. That comes to ₹45,880 a month and ₹5,50,560 for the first year. Over five years, with the SRF upgrade after two years, fellowship and HRA together come to ₹29,76,000. Add ₹1,00,000 contingency and the total becomes ₹30,76,000. If you tick the box for a third JRF year, the total comes down to ₹30,01,600.
Moving from JRF to SRF does not happen automatically. At the end of two years a committee in your institution will assess your progress, and the notes under the result explain the rule for each scheme. INSPIRE rules allow an early assessment, at the end of year one, when the fellow is first author of a paper in an SCI-indexed journal. Even then, the calculator takes two years for INSPIRE also.
Questions scholars ask
Which HRA class is my city?
Open “Which HRA class is my city?” just under the form. Bengaluru, Chennai and Hyderabad come in class X, and Coimbatore and Thiruvananthapuram come in class Y. Your native place doesn’t matter here. Take the town of the institution you joined.
Why isn’t HRA included until I type a rate?
Without your rate, any HRA we add will be only a guess. Institutions are applying the Central Government HRA rule to fellows differently, and the official fellowship documents don’t give one fixed percentage. Your accounts section knows what percentage they apply. Type that number.
When do I become an SRF?
For CSIR, UGC and INSPIRE fellows it happens after an assessment at the end of two years. An expert committee in your institution does this assessment. Suppose the committee is not satisfied with your progress. Then UGC keeps you on JRF pay for one more year and a second assessment is done. There is a box under the form for this extra JRF year, tick it and the calculator will show you the reduced total.
Does PMRF come with HRA?
Normally no. In the PMRF guideline document the PMRF amount is given without HRA. HRA is mentioned there only for the case where a review brings a fellow down to JRF or SRF pay. For this reason the calculator does not add HRA for PMRF.
Are my details sent anywhere?
No. All the calculation is done inside your browser itself. Our server only records that someone used the calculator, and it does not get the scheme or the rate you selected.
Sources
- DST Office Memorandum No. DST/PCPM/Z-06/2022, 26 June 2023: revised JRF and SRF emoluments (PDF, copy circulated by Anand Agricultural University)
- CSIR-HRDG: revised JRF (CSIR-UGC NET) guidelines, from 1 March 2023
- UGC: Junior Research Fellowship in Science, Humanities and Social Sciences
- DST INSPIRE Fellowship guidelines (PDF)
- PMRF overall guideline document, 27 July 2026 (PDF)
- ICSSR Guidelines, Doctoral Fellowships 2025–26 (PDF)
- Department of Expenditure, office memorandum on HRA city classes, 7 July 2017 (PDF)
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