NS pay is built from two parts: a rank allowance that climbs as you get promoted, and a vocation allowance from $75 to $500 a month on top, depending on how risky your role is. After the increase that took effect on 1 July 2025, a recruit starts on $790 a month and a full lieutenant draws $1,530, with both figures already including the minimum $75 vocation tier. Across the two years of full-time service, that works out to roughly $19,000 for a non-combat enlistee and over $38,000 for a high-risk combat officer, none of it touched by CPF and almost all of it tax-free in practice. Below is the rank-by-rank table, the vocation top-ups, and what you realistically walk away with.
Calling it a salary is a stretch. NS pay is an allowance, not employment income, which is why it does not attract CPF contributions and why the figures look low next to a graduate starting salary. The trade-off is that your two biggest costs, food and lodging, are covered while you are in camp, so far more of it can be saved than a $790 wage in the outside world would suggest.
Every NSF's monthly allowance is the sum of two components. The rank allowance is fixed by your current rank and rises each time you are promoted. The vocation allowance sits on top and reflects how physically demanding or dangerous your role is, ranging from $75 for service and technical roles up to $500 for the highest-risk vocations. Both are credited together into your bank account each month.
One point trips people up. The headline rank figures MINDEF publishes already bake in the minimum $75 vocation tier. So when you see a recruit on $790, that is $715 of rank allowance plus the base $75 vocation allowance. If you land a higher vocation tier, the extra stacks on top of the rank figure, not the $790 headline.
On 1 July 2025, every NSF across the SAF, Police and Civil Defence received a $35 to $75 monthly increase, around 4% to 5% for most ranks and the fourth revision in a decade. The table below shows the total monthly allowance, meaning rank allowance plus the base $75 vocation tier, as published by MINDEF for that revision.
Any guide still quoting a $580 or $680 recruit allowance is out of date. Use the right-hand column as your floor, then add the vocation top-up from the next section if your role qualifies for a higher tier.
| Rank | Before 1 Jul 2025 ($/mth) | From 1 Jul 2025 ($/mth) | Increase ($) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Recruit / Trainee | 755 | 790 | 35 |
| Private / Special Constable | 755 | 790 | 35 |
| Lance-Corporal | 775 | 815 | 40 |
| Corporal | 825 | 865 | 40 |
| Specialist Cadet Trainee | 845 | 885 | 40 |
| Corporal First Class | 865 | 910 | 45 |
| Third Sergeant | 1,075 | 1,130 | 55 |
| Second Sergeant | 1,175 | 1,235 | 60 |
| Officer Cadet | 1,035 | 1,085 | 50 |
| Second Lieutenant | 1,275 | 1,340 | 65 |
| Lieutenant | 1,455 | 1,530 | 75 |
Two NSFs holding the same rank can take home very different amounts, and the vocation allowance is why. Since 1 March 2020 it replaced the old combat allowance, and it sorts every role into four tiers. Only the lowest tier ($75) is included in the headline rank figures above; the other three add their full amount on top.
So a Third Sergeant infantry section commander on the $225 combat tier draws his $1,130 rank-and-base figure, then swaps the embedded $75 for the higher $225, netting around $1,280 a month. A naval diver or commando on the $500 tier sits far higher again. If you want to sanity-check your own number against a civilian benchmark, our take-home salary calculator shows what a comparable gross wage would leave after CPF.
| Tier | Monthly allowance | Typical roles |
|---|---|---|
| Service / Technical | $75 | Clerks, technicians, support and admin vocations |
| Standard combatant | $225 | Infantry, Guards, Armour, general combat roles |
| Demanding combat / seagoing | $300 | Aircrew, shipboard service, selected medical response |
| Highest-risk | $500 | Commandos, Naval Divers, CBRN / EOD specialists |
Your total NS pay over the full-time stint depends on how fast you are promoted and which vocation tier you land. The figures below are realistic two-year cash totals for common paths on the post-July-2025 rates, before adding the NS HOME Award credits covered later.
These are cash-in-hand allowance numbers. Because food and bunk are covered in camp, your savings rate during NS can comfortably beat anything you would manage on the same amount outside, which is the whole point of treating this as a head start rather than a wage.
Three levers move your total: how early you are promoted, whether you go through the Specialist or Officer track, and your vocation tier. An officer in a $500-tier vocation stacks the highest rank allowance with the highest vocation top-up for most of his service, which is how the top path more than doubles the bottom one.
If the goal is to bank as much as possible, the savings habit matters more than the rank. A plan for parking that cash sits in our companion guide on how much you can realistically save during NS.
NS pay is not subject to CPF, so nothing is deducted from your allowance and nothing is set aside for retirement during full-time service. On tax, the allowance is technically assessable, but a year of NS pay lands well below the $20,000 chargeable-income threshold where income tax kicks in, so in practice almost no NSF pays any. You can confirm where the threshold bites using our income tax calculator, and the underlying rule is explained in our tax relief glossary entry.
On top of the monthly allowance, citizen NSFs receive NS HOME Awards, cash top-ups paid at NS milestones into the Post-Secondary Education Account or CPF, plus LifeSG credits. Commanders at sergeant rank and above get an additional $500 top-up at each milestone. These are tax-exempt but mostly land in accounts you cannot spend freely, so treat them as a separate housing-and-education kitty rather than walking-around money.
On paper $790 a month looks brutal next to a fresh graduate's pay. The honest comparison is not gross versus gross, though, it is what each actually saves. A graduate on $4,000 loses about 20% to CPF, then pays rent, transport and food before anything is banked. An NSF keeps the full allowance and spends almost nothing on the essentials while in camp.
Where the real catch-up happens is afterwards. If you are weighing the SAF or Home Team as a career, the sign-on bonuses and starting salaries are in a different league from the allowance, as our guide on SAF sign-on bonuses and starting pay lays out. And the pay does not vanish at ORD: reservists earn NS Pay during in-camp training, covered in our NSmen reservist pay and bonuses guide.
A recruit or trainee receives $790 a month following the increase that took effect on 1 July 2025. That figure is $715 of rank allowance plus the base $75 vocation tier, both credited together into your bank account.
No. NS pay is an allowance rather than employment income, so no CPF contributions are made on it during full-time National Service. You receive the full monthly amount with nothing set aside.
In practice, almost none do. A year of NS pay sits well below the $20,000 chargeable-income threshold where income tax begins, so most NSFs have no tax to pay even though the allowance is technically assessable.
It ranges widely by path: around $19,000 for a non-combat enlistee, about $28,000 for a combat specialist who reaches Third Sergeant, and over $38,000 for an officer in a high-risk vocation, before NS HOME Award credits.
This is general financial information for Singapore, not personal financial advice. Figures change — verify current rates against the official sources above before acting. See our full disclaimer.