See your projected EPF and NPS corpus side by side, along with how their withdrawal rules and tax treatment differ.
EPF: 12% employee + 12% employer.
Your own + employer's combined.
EPF uses EPFO's declared rate (8.25%), fixed by the government each year.
at age 60
at age 60
Not a recommendation to pick one over the other — most salaried employees get both (EPF is usually mandatory; NPS is often voluntary or employer-offered). Compare the numbers against your own risk appetite and liquidity needs.
Neither is strictly 'better' — they serve different purposes. EPF is a fixed-return, fully tax-free, largely mandatory scheme. NPS is market-linked (potentially higher returns, but with risk), offers an extra tax deduction beyond the 80C cap, but locks part of your corpus into a mandatory annuity at retirement. Most salaried employees end up with both.
Yes. EPF is typically mandatory once your Basic salary structure requires it. NPS is separate — many employers offer a voluntary NPS contribution (often via salary restructuring under Section 80CCD(2)), and you can also open an individual NPS account and contribute independently.
NPS has a slight edge: beyond the shared ₹1.5L Section 80C cap (which both EPF and NPS contributions count against), NPS offers an additional ₹50,000 deduction under Section 80CCD(1B) that EPF doesn't have — though this extra deduction is only available under the old tax regime.
Yes, EPF withdrawal after 5 years of continuous service is entirely tax-free. NPS, by contrast, only has 60 percentage points of the withdrawal tax-free — the mandatory annuity portion is taxed as income when you eventually receive pension payments from it.