CTCtruth (“CTC truth”) helps professionals in India understand what their compensation actually means, from fixed pay and variable pay to PF, gratuity, equity and take-home.
Our mission
To bring clarity to what an Indian job offer really pays, before you sign it.
Total cost to company: ₹28,00,000 p.a.The headline, not your salary
Basic salary: ₹11,20,000 p.a.PF and gratuity are worked out from this
Performance bonus: ₹3,00,000 (target)A target, not a guarantee
Joining bonus: ₹2,00,000Repayable if you leave within 18 months
ESOPs: ₹8,00,000, vesting over 4 yearsPaper value, not cash
Estimated take-home≈ ₹16L a yearDerived
A note from the founder
CTCtruth started with a simple frustration.
Over the years, I've looked at plenty of job offers and found myself doing the same thing every time: opening a spreadsheet, breaking down CTC, checking PF, gratuity, taxes and bonuses, and figuring out what would actually reach my bank account.
The headline number looked great. The reality was often very different.
I built CTCtruth because I wished someone had built it for me earlier: a simple, honest way to understand what an offer really means before saying yes.
No confusing jargon. No guessing. Just clarity.
Clarity
Every major part of the CTC, explained.
Better questions
Ask HR the questions worth asking before you sign.
Privacy
Your offer is sensitive. It's read on your device, not uploaded.
Checked, not guessed
Where the data doesn't support a number, CTCtruth says so.
Why CTCtruth exists
The number on your offer letter isn't the number in your bank account.
In India, offers are commonly quoted as CTC: cost to company. That number bundles things that are never paid to you as monthly salary: the employer's PF contribution, a gratuity provision, a variable bonus that depends on performance, a one-time joining bonus, and sometimes the value of stock options.
Two offers with the same CTC can differ by thousands of rupees a month in what actually reaches your account. Offer letters rarely make that easy to see, and the moment you're asked to sign is a bad time to be doing the arithmetic by hand.
Headline CTC₹28LIllustrative example
Fixed pay₹19.1L
Variable pay₹3L
Employer PF₹1.3L
Gratuity₹0.5L
Joining bonus₹2L
Equity₹2L
CTC recurring cashRecurring cash, before tax₹19.1L
Only fixed pay arrives every month.
CTC take-homeEstimated take-home₹16L
≈ ₹1.33L a month, after your PF, professional tax and income tax.
If an offer letter doesn't provide enough information, CTCtruth shows what is unknown instead of silently inventing a number. Many calculators fill gaps with defaults, such as assuming PF sits inside the CTC or that Basic is 40% of it, and hand you one precise-looking number. The analyzer works from your letter instead; the quick calculator shows four example structures, each labelled as an assumption.
Every value is labelledIllustrative example
Basic salaryStated in the offer letter
₹12,00,000Known
Employer PF12% of Basic, by a stated rule
₹1,44,000Derived
Variable payoutLabelled, and yours to change
75% of targetAssumed
Gratuity inside CTC?Not stated, so not counted. Ask HR
—Unknown
Unknown is a valid answer.
Blank is not zeroAn empty field stays unknown. It's never quietly treated as ₹0; zero means zero.
Unknown isn't salaryIf part of the CTC isn't explained, it's shown on its own instead of being folded into your pay.
Derived values are labelledA figure worked out by a rule says so, and which rule.
Assumptions are visibleWhere one is unavoidable, such as a variable payout, it's labelled and yours to change.
Confidence reflects the inputsEach result says how complete the inputs are and why its confidence is high, medium or low.
Privacy
Your compensation is personal.
Offer letters carry your salary, your role and often your PAN and phone number. So CTCtruth is built to work without seeing them.
Read on your device
The analyzer runs entirely in your browser. Offer letters are read on your device and are never uploaded.
No accounts, no ads
There are no accounts, no ads and no third-party scripts, and fonts and libraries are served from this site. We count anonymous daily totals only; nothing identifies you or your offer.
Saved only where you save it
Saved offers stay in this browser's local storage. Export or delete them from My offers; clearing your browser data removes them.
Messages you send
Your offer never leaves your device. What does: a message you choose to send through the contact form, which is delivered through Netlify Forms and used only to reply to you, and the anonymous counts, which carry only an event name.
Because contact form messages do leave your device, please describe issues in general terms rather than pasting your offer letter into them. The privacy policy has the full details.
Limitations
Where CTCtruth has limits.
CTCtruth estimates. It doesn't replace your employer's payroll or a tax professional. In particular:
Tax estimates
Tax outcomes depend on the inputs and the tax year you select.
Professional tax uses one annual figure per city and doesn't model every state's salary slabs.
The old regime covers standard deduction, HRA exemption, 80C (including your PF), 80D, 24(b) and 80CCD(1B). Other deductions aren't modelled.
The old regime uses the rates for individuals below 60; the analyzer doesn't ask for age, so senior citizens' higher exemptions aren't applied.
Employer-specific policies
Your employer's payroll can apply rules differently from the general ones.
HRA exemption uses the metro rate for the cities marked as metro in the analyzer. Check how your employer applies it.
Document extraction
Offer letters vary in wording and layout.
Document reading uses pattern matching. It finds common labels, but it can miss or misread unusual layouts, which is why every value is shown for you to check.
Not professional advice
CTCtruth estimates and explains. It doesn't replace a tax professional.
For decisions with tax or legal consequences, check with a qualified professional and with your employer's policies.
Methodology
How the numbers are calculated.
The rules, the sources they come from, and how results are kept consistent.
Tax rules, by tax year
FY 2026-27 follows the Income-tax Act, 2025, in force from 1 April 2026, with the rates confirmed by the Finance Act, 2026: new-regime slabs under section 202, the section 156 rebate (up to ₹60,000 for income up to ₹12 lakh, with marginal relief, and up to ₹12,500 for income up to ₹5 lakh in the old regime), standard deduction under section 19, surcharge capped at 25% in the new regime with marginal relief, and 4% cess. FY 2024-25 and FY 2025-26 follow the Finance (No. 2) Act 2024 and the Finance Act 2025. Each offer is worked out under the tax year you select; tax year 2026-27 is the default.
Gratuity follows the Payment of Gratuity Act, 1972 formula: 15 × monthly Basic ÷ 26 for each year of service. PF follows the Employees' Provident Funds and Miscellaneous Provisions Act, 1952: 12% of the full Basic, 12% of Basic up to the ₹15,000-a-month statutory wage ceiling, or a stated amount, depending on what the offer says.
How results are kept consistent
The calculation engine is deterministic: the same inputs and tax year always give the same result. It's versioned (engine v2.6.0, shown in the analyzer), so a change to a rule or to the engine can change a result, and the version tells you which rules produced it. 182 of 182 automated checks pass, including invariants such as "unknown input never becomes zero"; you can run them from inside the analyzer.
Corrections
Spotted a wrong rule or a changed slab? Tell us; corrections are the most useful feedback there is.
Have an offer? Understand it before you sign.
Turn a complicated compensation structure into numbers you can actually understand and compare.