“How much gratuity after 5 years?” is the question that starts almost every gratuity conversation — quickly followed by 10, 15, 20 and 30 years. So here is the whole ladder on one page: a gratuity amount calculator in table form, giving the payout at eight career lengths for three salary levels, every cell computed from the statutory formula (last-drawn basic pay plus DA × 15/26 × years of service). Find your row, and you have your number; the sections after the table explain the rounding rule that decides borderline years and how to adjust the table when your salary is not exactly one of the three columns.

The method in one paragraph

Every figure below comes from the statutory formula in the Code on Social Security, 2020: monthly basic + DA × 15 ÷ 26 × completed years of service, where a final year with more than six months in it counts as a full year. The multiplier 15/26 works out to about 0.577 of one month’s salary per year of service — on a ₹50,000 salary, you bank ₹28,846.15 of gratuity for every year you stay. Gratuity only becomes payable at five years (unless service ends through death or disablement), which is why the table starts there. These are gross amounts before the ₹20,00,000 (₹20 lakh) ceiling, which only the longest, highest-paid careers reach — I flag exactly where it bites below.

The table: gratuity by years of service and salary

Every cell recomputed from basic + DA × 15/26 × years. Read across for your salary, down for your service; if your figures fall between columns, the next section shows the per-year shortcut.

How much gratuity after 5 years, specifically?

Five years is where the door opens, so it deserves its own moment. Gratuity after 5 years is exactly five years of accrual: at ₹30,000 a month it is ₹86,538.46; at ₹50,000, ₹1,44,230.77; at ₹80,000, ₹2,30,769.23. Two practical points hide inside those numbers. First, the jump from “4 years 11 months” to “5 years” is the whole amount — leave a month early without the death/disablement exception and the entitlement is zero, which is why resignation dates deserve a calendar check. Second, five calendar years is not quite the test: five years of continuous service is, and the Code counts a year as worked if you were on the rolls for the required days (240 days in most establishments, 190 in below-ground work) — authorised leave, maternity leave and layoff days do not break the count the way an unexplained absence can.

Your salary is not in the table? Use the per-year rate

The table is linear, which makes your own row easy to build. Each year of service adds the same slice — 15/26 of one month’s basic + DA:

For any other salary, divide it by 26 and multiply by 15 to get your per-year slice, then multiply by your years. A ₹65,000 salary, for instance, accrues ₹37,500 a year — 18 years of it is ₹6,75,000.

The rounding rule that moves real money

The Code counts service in whole years, but generously: a final part-year of more than six months rounds up to a full year, while six months or less rounds down. “More than” is doing work in that sentence — exactly six months does not round up. Watch what it does to one career on a ₹50,000 salary:

• 7 years 4 months of service → counts as 7 years → ₹2,01,923.08
• 7 years 7 months of service → counts as 8 years → ₹2,30,769.23

Three extra months across the rounding line are worth ₹28,846.15 — a full year’s accrual — because the formula pays for the rounded year, not the exact months. If you are choosing a resignation date and you sit just below a six-month line, this paragraph is worth more than most salary negotiations.

Where the ceiling bites

The Code caps gratuity at ₹20,00,000 (₹20 lakh), and the table quietly shows who should care. At ₹80,000 a month, even 40 years reaches only ₹18,46,153.85 — under the cap. The ceiling starts to bind around a basic + DA of ₹86,667 over a full 40-year career, or roughly ₹1,15,556 over 30 years. If that is you, your payable amount is the cap, not the formula (some employers pay the excess voluntarily as an ex-gratia amount — taxed as salary, and never owed under the Code). And remember the tax line from the main guide: gratuity is tax-free up to that same ₹20,00,000 (₹20 lakh) across your whole career, summed over employers, not per job.

The one thing the table cannot know: your last salary

Every figure here assumes the salary shown is your last drawn basic + DA, because that is what the law uses — not your average pay, not your starting pay. A career that ends at ₹50,000 after starting at ₹18,000 produces the ₹50,000 column, all the way down. That is why gratuity jumps so sharply for people promoted late in their careers, and why a pay cut in the final year (a move to a lighter role at lower basic, say) costs far more in gratuity than it saves in comfort. When you estimate, always run the formula on the salary you expect to hold on your last day.

The other formula: if your employer is not covered by the Code

One variation changes every figure in this article, and it applies to employees of establishments the Code does not cover (broadly, those below the ten-employee threshold, or where the Code has not been applied). Voluntary gratuity there is traditionally computed at 15 days’ wages per year on a 30-day month — 15/30 instead of 15/26 — and, in the stricter version of the practice, only completed years count, with no six-month rounding-up. Watch the difference on the same career — ₹50,000 a month, ten years:

• Covered establishment (the Code): ₹50,000 × 15/26 × 10 = ₹2,88,461.54, with the final part-year rounding up past six months.
• Non-covered practice: ₹50,000 × 15/30 × 10 = ₹2,50,000, completed years only.

That is ₹38,461.54 of daylight between two formulas that sound identical in casual conversation (“fifteen days per year”). When someone quotes you a gratuity figure, the first question is always: 26 or 30 in the denominator? This article’s tables — like the calculator — use 26, the statutory figure for covered establishments, which is most readers’ situation.

Why the last decade does the heavy lifting

Because the formula prices every year at your final salary, gratuity growth across a real career is back-loaded in a way the flat-salary table hides. Imagine two employees who both finish 25 years. The first ends on ₹40,000, having earned less throughout; the second’s late promotions carry her to ₹80,000 at the end:

Identical service; the only difference is the salary held on the last day. The formula has no memory — it never asks what you earned in year three.

The practical reading of that table cuts both ways. A promotion, increment or DA revision landing shortly before retirement lifts the entire gratuity, because it re-prices all 25 years. And a late-career move that reduces basic pay — however sensible for work-life reasons — quietly taxes every year already served. Neither effect appears in any per-year statement you receive along the way, which is why running the numbers before the final year, not after it, is the habit this table exists to build.

Reading the table in months of salary

There is a second way to feel these numbers, and for planning I find it sticks better than rupees. Because the formula pays 15/26 of a month per year, your gratuity is always a clean multiple of your final monthly salary:

The accrual rate never changes — 15/26 ÷ 12 ≈ 4.81% of basic + DA per year — which is the same figure employers use when they show gratuity inside a CTC.

Read this way, the table’s message sharpens: a 30-year career banks nearly a year and a half of final salary as gratuity, on top of salary itself and on top of provident fund. It also exposes the real cost of the five-year cliff one more time — resigning at four years does not cost you “a bit less” gratuity; it costs the entire 2.31 months of salary those four years had notionally accrued, because the entitlement, not just the payment, is what switches on at five.

A thirty-second self-test

Before you leave the page, run your own row once — it is the best way to make the table yours. Take a salary the table does not print, say a basic + DA of ₹42,000. The per-year slice is ₹42,000 × 15 ÷ 26 = ₹24,230.77. Multiply by your years: 17 years of service gives 17 × ₹24,230.77 = ₹4,11,923.08. Now check the rounding on your actual service: if those 17 years are really 17 years and 8 months, the Code pays you for 18 — ₹4,36,153.85 — and if they are 17 years and 5 months, it stays at 17. Two multiplications and one honest look at the calendar: that is the entire skill this article exists to teach, and the calculator below exists to confirm you did it right.

Sources: Code on Social Security, 2020 (Chapter V, Section 53 — 15 days’ wages per completed year of service, part-years over six months counting as a full year, continuous-service day counts, and the notified ceiling of ₹20 lakh), as summarised on the main calculator page. Every table cell was recomputed from basic + DA × 15/26 × years on 22 October 2026; figures assume the salary shown is the last-drawn basic + DA.