BAH Calculator
Enter your duty station ZIP code, pay grade, and dependency status to look up your official 2026 monthly Basic Allowance for Housing, straight from DTMO's own published rate data.
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This is not official pay guidance. Your actual BAH entitlement is determined by your service's finance office; this calculator applies DTMO's own published rate table to the inputs you give it.
How This Calculator Works
Your ZIP code is matched to one of 338 Military Housing Areas using DTMO's own ZIP-to-MHA mapping -- the same lookup the official BAH Rate Lookup tool on travel.dod.mil uses. That matching happens entirely in your browser: the ZIP code you type is never sent to a server.
Once your Military Housing Area is known, the rate for your pay grade and dependency status comes directly from DTMO's 2026 bulk rate data -- the same numbers behind the official lookup tool, not a third-party estimate.
Worked example
An E-5 with dependents at ZIP 99901 (KETCHIKAN, AK):
2026 BAH: $2,868.00/month
Common mistake
Assuming BAH scales smoothly with rank the way base pay does. It doesn't -- rates are set per grade per location from local rental-market data, so a one-grade difference can mean anywhere from a small jump to several hundred dollars a month depending on the area, and the gap itself varies location to location. Compare two specific grades in your own ZIP code rather than assuming a fixed percentage increase per grade.
Frequently Asked Questions
How is BAH actually determined?
DTMO surveys local rental housing costs (including utilities and renters insurance) in each Military Housing Area every year, and sets a rate for every combination of pay grade and dependency status in that area. Rates are meant to cover roughly the median cost of housing appropriate to each grade in that specific location -- which is why the same rank gets very different BAH in, say, San Diego versus rural Alabama.
Why does dependency status change my rate?
The 'with dependents' rate assumes a larger housing need (a service member supporting a spouse and/or children) than the 'without dependents' rate for the same grade and location, so it's set higher across almost every Military Housing Area.
Why do O-7 and above all show the same rate?
DTMO's own published rate data doesn't differentiate BAH by grade above O-6/O-7 -- O-7, O-8, O-9, and O-10 all receive the identical published rate in every Military Housing Area. This calculator's grade list reflects that directly rather than inventing a distinction the source data doesn't make.
What if my ZIP code isn't stateside, or isn't in the data?
A small number of ZIP codes -- U.S. territories, APO/FPO military addresses, and a handful of unassigned ranges -- don't have an assigned domestic Military Housing Area in DTMO's data. Those locations are typically covered by Overseas Housing Allowance (OHA), a separate DTMO program with its own rate structure that this calculator doesn't compute.
Is this the exact rate I'll actually be paid?
It's the official published rate for your grade, dependency status, and Military Housing Area -- but a few real situations can change what you're actually paid: BAH Reduced Rate Recipient status (most often, two married service members without dependents sharing a household), dependent-rate protection when a permanent-change-of-station move would otherwise lower your rate, and your official duty station ZIP code differing from the one you entered here. Your finance office's own determination governs.
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