About ArmyPayChart.com

What This Site Is

ArmyPayChart.com is a reference site for U.S. military basic pay, allowances, and the supporting concepts that turn a pay grade and time-in-service into a monthly check. It exists because the official source material — the DFAS pay tables, the BAH calculator, the National Defense Authorization Act, and the volumes of the DoD Financial Management Regulation — is authoritative but not always easy to navigate when you simply want to know what an E-5 with six years of service makes this year, or what changes when an officer takes BAH at the with-dependents rate.

We organize that information into one place, in one consistent format, and we keep it current with each annual pay update.

Who the Site Is For

The audience is broad on purpose. Active-duty service members checking what a promotion or year-of-service threshold actually moves the needle on. Reservists and Guard members reconciling drill pay against the active-duty table it's derived from. ROTC cadets and OCS candidates trying to understand what an O-1 lieutenant earns. Spouses and family members budgeting around an upcoming PCS. Recruiters answering the same questions over and over. Veterans figuring out how a retirement multiplier translates to retired pay. Reporters and analysts who need a clean, dated snapshot of compensation rather than a scraped table from a forum thread.

We don't require an account, we don't ask for personal information, and the calculator runs entirely in your browser.

What the Site Covers

The core content is the basic pay tables: enlisted (E-1 through E-9), commissioned officer (O-1 through O-10), commissioned officer with prior enlisted or warrant service (O-1E through O-3E), and warrant officer (W-1 through W-5). Each is broken out across the years-of-service columns the DoD uses, including the 30-, 34-, and 40-year columns that apply to senior enlisted, flag officers, and chief warrant officers.

Around the tables, we cover the components that make up actual take-home pay: Basic Allowance for Subsistence (BAS), Basic Allowance for Housing (BAH), and how special and incentive pays, COLA, and the Combat Zone Tax Exclusion change the picture. A pay calculator combines the basic pay table with BAS to estimate a monthly figure for a given grade and time-in-service.

Editorial Approach

Three rules shape every page on the site:

• Cite an official source. Pay rates, BAS rates, and allowance information come from DFAS, the DoD Office of the Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller), and the Defense Travel Management Office. Where a guide explains a regulation, we point to the specific public document.
• Date everything. Pay charts have an effective date. The BAS table shows the 2024, 2025, and 2026 rates side by side rather than a single number out of context. Substantive pages carry a "Last reviewed" date so you can see when the page was last checked against current sources.
• Be honest about limits. The pay calculator estimates basic pay plus BAS. It does not — and cannot — replace your Leave and Earnings Statement, which reflects your actual entitlements, deductions, and tax withholding. Where a topic depends on individual circumstances (retirement plan election, dependency status, ZIP-code BAH), we say so and link to the official tool.

How Content Is Produced

Pages are written by editors familiar with U.S. military compensation and reviewed against the underlying DFAS, DoD, and DTMO source material. Pay tables are transcribed from the published DFAS PDFs; figures shown on the site are spot-checked against the official source before each annual update and on a rolling basis when policy changes are announced.

When DFAS publishes a new annual pay table — typically in mid-December for the following calendar year, with junior-enlisted adjustments occurring at separate effective dates in some years — we update the relevant tables, the calculator dataset, and the dated context on each page. If a figure is wrong or out of date, we want to fix it; the fastest path is the contact information below.

Independence and No Government Affiliation

ArmyPayChart.com is privately operated. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or officially connected to the United States Government, the Department of Defense, the Defense Finance and Accounting Service, or any branch of the U.S. Armed Forces. Where we link to .mil and .gov sites, those links are provided for the reader's convenience.

How the Site Is Funded

The site is supported by display advertising, primarily through Google AdSense. Ads do not influence which figures we publish, and we do not take payment in exchange for editorial coverage. Details on how advertising data is handled are in the Privacy Policy and the Cookies page.

Get in Touch

Corrections, questions, and suggestions are welcome. Email [email protected] or use the Contact page. Please include the page URL and, where relevant, a citation to the official figure you believe is correct — that lets us check and update quickly.