PPF calculator
See what a Public Provident Fund grows to over its 15-year term and beyond, and why a modest tax-free rate beats a higher taxable one.
Runs entirely in your browser — nothing you type is sent anywhere. Educational only, and not investment advice.
How to use this calculator
Each step names a control you will find on screen above.
- Yearly investment
What you put in each year, up to the ₹1.5 lakh annual limit. The calculator assumes the contribution goes in at the start of each year.
- Interest rate
The PPF rate, which the government revises every quarter. Enter the current rate; it has hovered around 7–7.1% in recent years.
- For how long
The lock-in is 15 years. After that PPF can be extended in blocks of five, so the slider runs on to show what continuing buys you.
- Read the maturity and the pre-tax equivalent
The maturity value and the interest earned are both entirely tax-free. The read-out also shows the rate a taxable deposit would need to match it after tax — usually a figure no safe deposit pays.
Worked example: The full ₹1.5 lakh a year for 15 years
Investing the maximum ₹1,50,000 a year at 7.1%, for the full 15-year term.
What to enter
- Yearly investment
- ₹1,50,000
- Interest rate
- 7.1%
- For how long
- 15 years
What it shows you
- Maturity value
- ≈ ₹40.7 lakh
- You invested
- ₹22.5 lakh
- Tax-free interest
- ≈ ₹18.2 lakh
- Pre-tax equivalent
- ≈ 10.1%
₹1.5L × 15
7.1% ÷ (1 − 0.30)
Where this is taught
A calculator gives you a number. These explain what the number means and when it misleads you.
- Market Basics12 minEPF, PPF and NPS: the accounts that quietly do the workThe three retirement accounts most Indians already hold, what each actually returns, how they are taxed, and where they should sit in an allocation.
- Risk & Psychology15 minThe allocation nobody has ever measuredThe app says 100 per cent equity and the household calls itself aggressive. Four other institutions hold the rest of the money, and on the only total that matters the figure is 40 per cent — which is why the prudent-sounding trim moves the household away from its target rather than towards it.
- Technical Analysis13 minA chart with no historyA demerged company lists on a Tuesday with no past at all. Every tool in this track needs a lookback window and there is not one, so the first weeks are read with borrowed structure or with none.
- Market Basics11 minActually starting: your first portfolioA concrete, defensible way to begin — what to buy first, how much, in what order, and the mistakes that make the first year unnecessarily expensive.
- Market Basics12 minAnnuities, NPS at sixty, and turning a corpus into an incomeBuilding the corpus is the part everyone plans for. Converting it into forty years of monthly income is the part almost nobody does — and the default option is rarely the best one.