Military Pay Calculator

Your total military pay includes basic pay, allowances (like BAH and BAS), and any special or incentive pay you earn. Basic pay is based on your rank and years of service. Allowances help cover housing and food costs. Special pay covers things like hazardous duty, flight pay, or sea pay. This calculator adds all of these together and subtracts estimated taxes to show your take-home pay.

No. Allowances such as BAH, BAS and the overseas housing and cost-of-living allowances are excluded from your federal gross income.⁶ Your basic pay, special and incentive pay, and COLA paid in the continental U.S. are subject to federal income tax. This is why your take-home pay is often higher than it looks from basic pay alone.

Your pay grade matches your rank. Enlisted members use E-1 through E-9. Warrant Officers use W-1 through W-5. Commissioned Officers use O-1 through O-10. An O-1, O-2 or O-3 credited with over 4 years of active duty as an enlisted member or warrant officer is paid at the O-1E, O-2E or O-3E rate instead.⁸¹⁶ If you are not sure of your pay grade, check your Leave and Earnings Statement (LES) or ask your unit's finance office.

No. Basic pay is the same across all branches: Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard, and Space Force. Your pay grade and years of service set your basic pay amount. Two cases differ: an E-1 with less than 4 months of active duty is paid $2,225.70 a month, and an E-9 serving in one of the top enlisted posts, such as Sergeant Major of the Army or Master Chief Petty Officer of the Coast Guard, is paid $11,166.90 whatever their years of service.¹

BAH stands for Basic Allowance for Housing.³ It helps you pay for a place to live when you do not live on base. The amount depends on three things: your pay grade, your duty station ZIP code, and whether you have dependents.³ Higher-cost areas get higher BAH rates.¹⁵ This calculator looks up the published 2026 rate for the housing area that contains your duty station ZIP code.

Usually not. When you live in government housing on base, the military provides your housing at no cost.¹⁵ If your family lives in government family housing, you do not receive BAH. A member without dependents who lives in single government quarters, such as barracks, receives the partial BAH rate instead.¹⁵

CONUS means the Continental United States, the 48 connected states plus Washington, D.C.¹⁰ OCONUS means Outside the Continental United States. This includes Alaska, Hawaii, and all overseas locations.¹⁰ Your location affects your housing allowance and whether you receive COLA.

COLA stands for Cost of Living Allowance. It is extra pay to help offset high living costs at certain duty stations. Not everyone gets COLA. It is most common for members stationed overseas or in expensive areas like Alaska and Hawaii. In the continental U.S. it is paid only in a few high-cost areas, by duty station ZIP code. Overseas and in Alaska and Hawaii it is set by location, and the calculator asks you to pick yours. Check the COLA toggle in the calculator to include it in your estimate.

If you serve in a designated combat zone, your basic pay and special pay become tax-free. For enlisted members and warrant officers, there is no cap.⁶ For commissioned officers, the exclusion is limited to the highest rate of enlisted pay plus any imminent danger or hostile fire pay for the month.⁶ When you select "Yes" for combat zone, the calculator removes the estimated tax on that pay. For commissioned officers it taxes only the pay above the monthly limit.

Enter your best guess for your combined federal and state income tax rate. If your state has no income tax, just use your federal rate. The default of 12% works as a reasonable starting point for many enlisted members.

Guard and Reserve members are paid for each drill period they serve, not a full monthly salary. Each drill period pays one-thirtieth of the monthly basic pay for your rank and years of service, and no more than two drill periods can be paid for one day.¹¹ A two-day drill weekend can therefore hold up to 4 drill periods. This calculator shows the full monthly rate, and for Guard or Reserve it also shows the pay for one drill and for a 4-drill weekend. To estimate drill pay for another number of drills, divide the monthly basic pay by 30 and multiply by the number of drill periods you serve.⁵

BAS stands for Basic Allowance for Subsistence. It helps cover the cost of food. Most active duty members receive BAS. It is not paid during basic military training, including initial officer training such as Officer Candidate School, unless you have continuous prior enlisted service.¹³ In 2026, enlisted members get $476.95 per month and officers get $328.48 per month.² BAS is tax-free.⁶

Family Separation Allowance (FSA), often called family separation pay, is $300 per month for service members involuntarily separated from their dependents.⁴ It is paid when your dependents are not authorized to move to your permanent duty station at government expense and do not live near it, when you are on duty aboard a ship away from its home port for more than 30 continuous days, or when you are on temporary duty away from your duty station for more than 30 continuous days and your dependents do not live at or near the temporary duty station.⁴ It is tax-free.⁶

Higher enlisted grades like E-8 and E-9 require many years of service to reach. The 2026 pay table starts E-8 pay at over 8 years of service and E-9 pay at over 10 years.¹ The calculator will find the first valid rate for your grade if you set years of service too low.

The clothing allowance is a yearly payment given to enlisted members only to help replace and maintain uniforms.¹⁴ Officers do not receive it. They may be paid an initial uniform allowance once instead. Starting October 1, 2026, the basic cash clothing replacement allowance runs from $425.39 a year (Air Force, male) to $626.40 (Marine Corps, female), and the standard allowance from $607.70 to $894.24.⁷ The basic allowance is paid in your first 3 years of active service and the standard allowance after that.¹⁴ All Navy chief petty officers get a special allowance instead.⁷

Having dependents mainly increases your BAH rate. The military pays a higher housing allowance to members with a spouse or children. Your basic pay does not change based on dependents. Family Separation Pay also requires dependents, or a spouse who is also a service member and lived with you before the separation.⁴

Years of service means all your creditable military time, including active duty, Guard, and Reserve service.¹² For an officer, time at a service academy usually does not count, and ROTC time counts only if you were also a drilling member of the Selected Reserve at the same time.¹² This number determines where you fall on the pay chart within your pay grade. More years of service usually means higher pay at the same rank.

Basic pay gets a pay raise each year on January 1 under federal law. Your pay also goes up when you get promoted to a higher grade or when you reach the next years-of-service step on the pay chart. BAH rates are also updated every year based on local housing costs.³