GS pay calculator, 2026

What this works out

Every General Schedule salary is one base rate multiplied by one locality percentage. The base table is the same everywhere in the country; the percentage depends only on the duty station, and in 2026 it runs from 17.06% to 46.34%. A GS-12 step 5 starts from a base of $86,659 and finishes somewhere between $101,443 and $126,817 depending on nothing but geography.

The order matters and is fixed by law. The percentage is applied to the base rate, the result is rounded to the nearest dollar, and only then is it checked against the statutory ceiling of $197,200 — Level IV of the Executive Schedule. Doing those steps in a different order changes the answer at the top of the schedule, which is one reason published figures sometimes disagree between reference sites. Every rate this calculator produces was checked against the published OPM table cell by cell: all 8,700 of them match to the dollar.

What it does not include

This is gross pay — what the job pays before anything is taken out. It is not take-home pay. Federal deductions depend on choices and circumstances this page knows nothing about: your FERS contribution tier, which depends on when you were first hired; how much you put into the Thrift Savings Plan and whether it is traditional or Roth; which FEHB plan you carry and at what enrollment level; FEGLI; your filing status; and the income tax of the state you live in, which is not always the state you work in.

We would rather show one number that is exactly right than a take-home estimate built on half a dozen assumptions we invented for you. Every figure here comes from a published federal table.

Why the ZIP code sometimes fails

Locality is decided by your duty station — the place you physically report to — and duty stations are assigned to counties, not to ZIP codes. To answer by ZIP we join the Census Bureau’s ZIP-code-to-county file to the OPM list of counties in each locality pay area. That works for the great majority of ZIPs and fails in three situations worth knowing about.

Some ZIP codes serve post office boxes or a single large building and have no territory of their own; they are absent from the Census file, and the calculator says so rather than guessing at a neighbor. Some ZIP codes straddle a county line, and occasionally the two counties sit in different locality pay areas — about 1,400 of the 33,791 do. In that case we return the area covering the larger share of the ZIP’s land, which is right far more often than not but is not a guarantee. And a few military installations are assigned by OPM to a different locality than the county around them; the base gate can be a pay boundary.

When the answer matters — a job offer, a relocation, a grievance — confirm it with your servicing HR office. What this page can tell you exactly is what each locality pays. Which locality you are in is a question about your paperwork.

The line other calculators do not print

Locality pay is calculated from what private employers in the same region pay for comparable work. It is not a cost-of-living adjustment, and OPM says so plainly. The two are related but they are not the same thing, and the gap between them is large enough to reverse the ranking of the highest-paying areas.

So alongside the salary this calculator divides it by the local price level — the Bureau of Economic Analysis Regional Price Parity for 2024, where 100 is the national average, shown here to one decimal place though computed from the published three — and tells you where that leaves you against the other localities. On paper the best-paid GS-12 in the country works in San Jose–San Francisco–Oakland. Once prices are counted, the salary that goes furthest belongs to Laredo, Texas.

Two cautions on that comparison. The price index is published a year or more behind the pay tables, and metropolitan boundaries do not match locality boundaries exactly, so the nearest metropolitan area is used as the proxy. Where two areas come out within one percent of each other, the calculator says they are the same rather than pretending to a precision the data does not have.

Overtime, and why it is often worth less than you expect

For most federal employees an overtime hour is paid at one and a half times the hourly rate. Above a threshold it is not. Under 5 U.S.C. 5542, once your own hourly rate exceeds the hourly rate for GS-10 step 1 in your locality, the overtime hour is paid at the greater of your own rate and one and a half times that GS-10 step 1 rate — whichever is larger, not both.

The practical effect surprises people. A GS-13 or GS-14 working an extra hour is frequently paid exactly their ordinary hourly rate for it, with no premium at all, because their own rate has already overtaken the capped figure. The calculator prints the overtime rate for the cell you chose and says plainly when it has stopped being a premium.

When the next step arrives

Step increases are not a raise you negotiate; they arrive on a fixed schedule as long as performance is acceptable. One year each to reach steps 2, 3 and 4; two years each to reach steps 5, 6 and 7; three years each to reach steps 8, 9 and 10. From step 1 to step 10 is eighteen years at the same grade.

A promotion to a higher grade restarts that clock, which is why a promotion landing a month before a step increase was due can be worth less in the first year than it looks. Long periods in non-pay status push the waiting period out as well.

Pay systems this calculator does not cover

Roughly a third of federal employees are not paid from the General Schedule at all. Wage Grade trades and labor positions use locality wage schedules built from local prevailing rates. The Senior Executive Service, the Federal Aviation Administration, the Transportation Security Administration, Department of Veterans Affairs Title 38 medical positions and several demonstration projects each run their own systems.

Two adjustments sit on top of the General Schedule and are not modelled here. Special rate tables cover occupations where the government struggles to recruit; where one applies, the employee receives the higher of the special rate and the locality rate — never the two added together. Law enforcement officers at grades GS-3 through GS-10 are entitled to higher locality rates than the ordinary table shows. If either applies to you, the figure here is a floor rather than an answer.

Where the numbers come from

Salary tables and locality percentages: U.S. Office of Personnel Management, 2026 General Schedule salary tables. Locality pay area definitions: OPM, 2026. Price levels: U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis Regional Price Parities, 2024. ZIP-code-to-county relationships: U.S. Census Bureau, 2020 ZCTA relationship file. All are works of the United States government and in the public domain.