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See your 2026 military basic pay by pay grade and years of service — using the current DFAS tables (3.8% raise, effective January 2026).
Sources: DFAS — 2026 military pay tables
E-5 · over 6 years — monthly basic pay
January 1, 2026 basic pay (3.8% raise), from the DFAS pay tables. This is basic pay only — it excludes BAH, BAS, and special/incentive pays, which can add a lot. Estimate your housing allowance with the BAH calculator.
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Planning your transition? Estimate your BAH, your retirement, or your terminal leave.
Basic pay is set by two things only: your pay grade and your years of service. It is the same in every duty station and for every job in the military. The 2026 tables carry a 3.8% increase effective 1 January 2026 under the FY2026 National Defense Authorization Act.
What it excludes is most of what you are actually paid. BAH, BAS, and every special and incentive pay sit on top of it, and the two allowances are non-taxable. Treating basic pay as your compensation will understate it badly, which matters most at exactly the moment you start comparing civilian offers.
A civilian salary is fully taxable. A military package is basic pay plus non-taxable allowances plus TRICARE plus a retirement benefit. Comparing the headline numbers is comparing two different things, and it usually flatters the civilian offer.
Build the real figure before you decide: add your BAH, run the full take-home calculator for taxes and TSP, and if you are near the decision point, price what you would be walking away from with the pension value calculator.
Retired pay is built on your High-3, the average of your highest 36 months of basic pay. Allowances are not in it. So basic pay is not only this month's paycheck, it is the number your pension is calculated from, and a promotion in the final stretch of a career is worth considerably more than the monthly difference suggests. The retirement calculator works that through.
Basic pay increased 3.8% effective January 1, 2026, under the FY2026 National Defense Authorization Act.
Basic pay is set by your pay grade (rank) and years of service, per the DFAS pay tables. It does not include allowances like BAH (housing) or BAS (food), or special and incentive pays.
No — this is basic pay only. BAH (housing) and BAS (food) are separate allowances on top of basic pay and can add a significant amount. Use the BAH calculator for your housing allowance.
No, and this is the single most expensive mistake people make when comparing a job offer. BAH and BAS are non-taxable, so a package built partly from allowances is worth noticeably more than a civilian salary of the same headline figure. Work out your full military compensation first, including the tax treatment, then compare. A civilian offer usually has to exceed the headline military number to break even.
No. Each pay grade has a cap on years-of-service steps, and once you hit the last column for your grade your basic pay stops increasing with longevity. From that point only a promotion or the annual raise moves it. That is worth knowing when you are weighing staying in against getting out, because the curve flattens sooner than most people expect.
Quite a lot. Basic pay excludes BAH, BAS, and every special and incentive pay: flight, dive, hazardous duty, sea pay, hardship duty, family separation, foreign language proficiency, and any bonus. It also excludes the value of TRICARE and the retirement benefit. Basic pay is the base the rest is built on, not your compensation.
Directly, because retired pay is calculated on your High-3, the average of your highest 36 months of basic pay. Allowances do not count toward it. That is why a promotion late in a career is worth more than it first appears, and why the last three years of basic pay carry weight far beyond the paycheck itself.