About SalaryTruth

Why this site exists

If you’ve ever tried to figure out your real monthly take-home from a CTC number on an offer letter, you know the problem. The math is genuinely tricky — basic vs. allowance splits, PF, professional tax that varies by state, two different income-tax regimes, the standard deduction, the 87A rebate — and most calculators online either hide the assumptions behind a paywall, force you to create an account, or just round things until the answer looks nice.

SalaryTruth was built to do one thing well: tell you the truth about your in-hand salary in fifteen seconds, without asking you for a single piece of personal information. Everything runs in your browser. Nothing you type is ever sent to a server.

We’ve since added comparison tools, role-specific pages, a hike calculator, a tax-savings planner, salary-slip generation, and a growing library of guides — all free, all client-side.

How our numbers are calculated

We believe a calculator is only useful if you can see the working. Here is what our in-hand calculation does under the hood:

• Basic salary is taken as 40–50% of CTC (configurable per role), in line with typical Indian payroll structures.
• Employee PF is calculated at 12% of basic salary, capped and floored per EPFO rules.
• Professional tax uses state-specific monthly rates (Karnataka, Maharashtra, Telangana, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal and others differ; Delhi has none).
• Income tax is computed against both the New Regime (FY 2025–26 slabs with 75,000 standard deduction and the section-87A rebate up to ₹12 lakh taxable income) and the Old Regime (with 50,000 standard deduction and 87A up to ₹5 lakh), then a 4% Health & Education Cess is applied.
• City multipliers reflect typical market premiums or discounts relative to Bangalore for the same role and experience.

Real outcomes will differ from these estimates — your employer’s exact salary structure, your investment declarations, and any company-specific allowances all matter. We’re upfront about this in our Disclaimer.

Where our salary data comes from

The salary ranges for each role, experience level, and company tier are built from publicly available signals — aggregated job-portal listings, published market reports, peer-shared offer data, and crowd-sourced inputs from our own users. We deliberately use broad ranges rather than single “average” figures because real pay varies widely between individuals at the same role and level.

Tax slabs, rebate thresholds, standard deductions, and professional-tax rates are taken from the Income Tax Act, the latest Finance Act, EPFO notifications, and state government circulars. We update these when the law changes — usually within a few weeks of the change taking effect.

How we stay free

Running a website costs money, so we monetise in two clearly-labelled ways:

• Advertising served through Google AdSense. We do not choose which ads you see and we do not get paid more for any particular advertiser.
• Affiliate links to a small number of third-party services (job portals, learning platforms, financial product comparison sites). When you click through and sign up, we may earn a referral fee at no extra cost to you.

Neither of these influences the numbers our calculators produce or the content of our articles. If a calculation comes out unfavourable for one of our affiliate partners, we don’t fudge it.

What you can do here

Get in touch

Found a calculation that looks wrong? Want to suggest a new role or city? Spotted a typo? We genuinely want to hear from you. Reach out through our contact form and we typically reply within 2–3 working days.

Page last reviewed: May 19, 2026