One chart decides the basic pay of every central government employee in India: the pay matrix of the 7th Central Pay Commission. This article reproduces that chart in full — all 19 level columns and all 540 cells, exactly as notified — and then teaches the only skill the chart asks of you: how to address a cell by its level and its stage, and read your own pay off it.

One chart, whatever you call it

The chart travels under more names than any other table in Indian pay administration. It is the pay matrix 7th pay structure in the commission’s own report; office shorthand calls it the 7cpc matrix or the central pay matrix; search boxes see the 7 pay matrix table, the 7cpc pay matrix, the pay matrix table 7th cpc, the seventh pay commission matrix, the matrix 7th pay commission, the cpc 7th pay matrix and the cpc 7 pay matrix; the same chart answers to central 7th pay matrix and 7th commission pay matrix, to 7 th cpc pay matrix and to 7th cpc pay matrix central govt staff draw from. Every one of those names lands on the single table below — the matrix notified with the CCS (Revised Pay) Rules, 2016, unchanged since 1 January 2016.

How the chart is built: levels across, stages down

Read the chart the way it was drawn. The columns are the levels — 19 of them: Level 1 to Level 18, with a Level 13A inserted between 13 and 14. The rows are the stages (the cells of a column, counted from the top). Your pay lives at one address: a level, which your post decides, and a stage, which your years of increments decide. In matrix pay level terms, moving down a column is the annual increment — each stage is the one above it increased by about 3%, rounded to the nearest hundred — and moving right is a promotion or a MACP upgradation into the next level. The 7th pay matrix level structure therefore carries a whole career in one column: a Level 1 entrant starts at the top cell and, with no promotion at all, walks down 40 stages over a full service life.

Two edges of the chart are worth knowing before the tables. Levels 1 to 10 run the full 40 stages. The senior columns shorten — Level 11 has 39 cells, Level 12 has 34, Level 13 has 20, Level 14 has 15 — because senior officers reach the top of the chart’s pay range sooner. Levels 17 (Apex) and 18 (Cabinet Secretary) are single fixed cells with no stages at all: ₹2,25,000 and ₹2,50,000.

The full matrix — Levels 1 to 5

The full matrix — Levels 6 to 9

The full matrix — Levels 10 to 12

The full matrix — Levels 13 to 18

Every figure above is the notified cell value, in rupees per month. The fastest self-check on any cell: it is the cell above it times 1.03, rounded to the nearest hundred — the whole chart is generated by that one rule running down each column from its entry cell.

Reading your own cell, worked twice

First reading. Start at level 1 of 7th cpc pay matrix — the bottom-left corner of the chart’s working area. Its first cell, ₹18,000, is the minimum pay of the entire central structure: the stage-1 cell of Level 1. Nothing in the central matrix sits below it, and every other entry cell on the chart is ₹18,000 multiplied by that level’s index of rationalisation — which is why the entry cells climb the way they do (₹35,400 at Level 6, ₹44,900 at Level 7, ₹1,23,100 at Level 13).

Second reading. Take a serving employee whose basic pay today is ₹58,600. Which cell is that? Run the figure down the columns: it is not in Levels 1 to 6 at that position in a career — it appears as stage 10 of Level 7 — the level 7 pay matrix column (and, coincidentally, as a late stage of Level 6). The level is fixed by the post, not chosen by the figure, so a Level 7 officer on ₹58,600 is at stage 10, with the next increment taking the cell to ₹60,400. On the 7th CPC Salary Calculator page, that reading is the tool’s first two inputs: level, then cell.

The rows readers look up most

The level 13 pay matrix row surprises everyone the first time: Level 13 opens at ₹1,23,100, far above the ₹1,18,477 that a plain 2.57 multiplication of the old minimum (₹46,100) would suggest. The jump is deliberate — Level 13 is where Pay Band-4 began, and the commission’s rationalisation set the level’s start above the raw product, so pay fixed there in 2016 landed on the entry cell itself. The row runs 20 stages to ₹2,15,900. Its neighbour, the level 14 pay matrix row (the old grade pay 10000), opens at ₹1,44,200 and runs 15 stages to ₹2,18,200; Level 13A, between them, opens at ₹1,31,100.

The level 11 pay matrix and level 12 pay matrix rows are the senior Group A working rows: Level 11 (old grade pay 6600) opens at ₹67,700 across 39 stages; Level 12 (old grade pay 7600) opens at ₹78,800 across 34. The level 9 pay matrix row opens at ₹53,100 — the second of the two old 5400 grade pays — while pay matrix level 10, the Group A entry, opens at ₹56,100: the level 10 pay matrix 7th cpc column is the one every UPSC entrant reads first, and pay matrix level 11 is where that career’s first MACP or promotion conversation usually lands. At the chart’s working end, pay matrix level 4 opens at ₹25,500 — the old 2400 grade pay, one of the most populous rows in the services.

From matrix to money. A cell is a basic pay, not a salary. The level 10 pay matrix in hand salary question — what the ₹56,100 cell actually pays — is answered by running the payslip lines over it: at today’s 60% DA, in an X-class city, that cell pays an estimated ₹1,08,364 in hand. The companion article works that same conversion for every level from 1 to 14; the 7th CPC Salary Calculator runs it for any cell you pick.

Where grade pay sits in this chart

The matrix abolished grade pay, but it did not erase it: each level is the successor of exactly one old grade pay, and the succession is printed in the services’ memory as the 4200 grade pay matrix (Level 6), the 4600 column (Level 7), and so on up the chart. If your service records still speak grade pay — many do — the level you want is the one whose entry cell your grade pay maps to; the companion grade-pay mapping article tabulates all fifteen successions with their pay bands.

A note on state adoption — Gujarat and the rest

This chart is the central matrix. Most states adopted the 7th CPC pattern for their own employees through their own notifications, Gujarat among them: the 7th pay matrix gujarat searches look for is this same chart as taken into the Gujarat state structure. But adoption is a state act — fitment dates, any state-specific modifications and the arrears schedule are the state’s, so a state employee’s governing document is the state notification, with this chart as the pattern it follows. Railway and defence personnel draw on this same central matrix; their allowances, not their matrix, are what differ.

The chart has not changed by a single cell since 1 January 2016, and it will not change until the next commission’s matrix is notified. What moves your pay in the meantime is dearness allowance on top of your cell — the subject of the companion DA article — and your own walk down your column, one stage a year.

Method and sources: the matrix reproduced in full from the pay matrix notified with the CCS (Revised Pay) Rules, 2016 (7th Central Pay Commission Report, Chapter 5), cross-checked cell by cell against the calculator page’s proofed table — every column verified against the chart’s generating rule (each cell = the cell above x 1.03, rounded to the nearest hundred). DA rate 60% effective 1 January 2026, Department of Expenditure OM dated 22 April 2026, re-verified 23 October 2026.