About GS Pay Scales

GS Pay Scales is an independent informational website designed to make General Schedule (GS) pay information easier to find, understand, and use. Our goal is to provide federal employees, job applicants, researchers, and anyone interested in federal compensation with a clear way to explore GS salary tables, locality pay rates, grades, steps, and historical pay data.

Federal pay information can involve large salary tables, different locality areas, multiple grades and steps, and rules that are not always easy to navigate. GS Pay Scales organizes this information into searchable pages, tables, calculators, and practical guides so visitors can quickly find the information relevant to them.

What You Can Find on This Website

GS Pay Scales provides resources covering the General Schedule pay system, including current and historical salary information. Depending on the page, you can explore:

GS-1 through GS-15 salary tables
Steps 1 through 10 within each GS grade
2026 GS base pay rates
2026 locality pay tables
Locality-specific GS salary calculators
Current and historical GS pay calculators
Historical General Schedule salary tables
Within-grade increase information
GS promotion and two-step rule information
Special rate and federal pay guides

Our calculators are intended to make large pay tables easier to use. Instead of manually searching across rows and columns, visitors can select a grade and step to locate the corresponding salary from the data available on the site.

Our Data Sources

Salary information presented on GS Pay Scales is based primarily on official pay information published by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM). Where appropriate, pages include links to the relevant official OPM source so visitors can verify salary rates and other information directly with the government source.

For locality pay pages, we use the published annual locality salary tables rather than simply adding a locality percentage to a base salary. This helps ensure that the salary displayed corresponds to the values in the applicable published pay table.

Historical salary information is organized by pay year so that visitors can look up the applicable General Schedule rates for a particular year rather than applying current rates to a historical period.

Why We Built GS Pay Scales

Official federal pay information is authoritative, but visitors may need to move between different tables and resources to answer a simple question such as how much a particular GS grade and step pays in a specific locality.

GS Pay Scales is designed to provide a simpler interface for that research. We organize commonly used federal pay information by grade, step, locality, year, and topic while providing calculators and internal links that make it easier to move between related information.

Accuracy and Updates

We aim to keep the information on this website accurate and aligned with official source data. Pay schedules and federal compensation rules can change, and new salary tables are generally published for new pay years.

When new information becomes available, we may update salary tables, calculators, guides, and related pages. Visitors making employment, compensation, retirement, tax, or other important decisions should verify the applicable information with OPM or their employing federal agency.

Independent Informational Resource

GS Pay Scales is an independent website. It is not an official U.S. government website and is not operated by, endorsed by, or affiliated with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management or any other federal agency.

References to OPM, the General Schedule, federal agencies, pay tables, and other government information are provided for informational and educational purposes. Official government sources remain the authoritative source for federal employment and compensation information.

Corrections and Feedback

We want the information on GS Pay Scales to be useful and easy to understand. If you notice an incorrect salary value, outdated information, a broken link, or another issue, please let us know.

You can reach us through our Contact page. When reporting a data issue, including the relevant page, locality, grade, step, or pay year can help us review the information more efficiently.

Explore GS Pay Information

You can begin with the 2026 GS Pay Scale, browse 2026 GS Locality Pay Areas, or use the GS Pay Calculator to look up salary information by grade and step.