CostAnswerSearch calculators
Menu

GSA rates for federal travel

GSA Per Diem Trip Calculator

Federal travel per diem for a trip in the continental U.S.: the GSA lodging ceiling for every night, meals and incidentals for every day, and a check of your actual room rate against the cap. Type a city or ZIP.

Your numbers

Federal travel per diem

GSA ceilings for FY2026, effective 2025-10-01 to 2026-09-30. Continental U.S. only.

Selected: Washington, DC

Type a city, county, or five-digit ZIP. Anywhere GSA does not list separately takes its state's standard CONUS rate.
$a nightOptional. Before tax. Compared with the GSA lodging ceiling, night by night.
Same day for a trip with no overnight stay

Trip total

$1,147.00$825.00 lodging + $322.00 meals and incidentals · 3 nights and 4 days in Washington, DC

This rate covers Washington DC (also the cities of Alexandria, Falls Church and Fairfax, and the counties of Arlington and Fairfax, in Virginia; and the counties of Montgomery and Prince George's in Maryland).

Lodging$825.00$275 a night, before tax
Meals and incidentals$322.00$92 a full day, $69.00 on travel days
Trip total$1,147.003 nights of lodging · 4 days of meals

Daily meal split: $23 breakfast · $26 lunch · $38 dinner · $5 incidentals.

How we got this
  1. Lodging ceiling3 nights at $275, before taxes and fees$825.00
  2. Meals and incidentals2 full days at $92, plus two travel days at $69.00$322.00
  3. Maximum reimbursementFY2026 rates for Washington, DC$1,147.00
What we assumed
  • These are the federal ceilings, not what a trip costs. Lodging is reimbursed at actual cost up to the cap, so a cheaper room is reimbursed at the cheaper price.
  • The lodging cap excludes taxes and fees, which are reimbursed separately on top of it.
  • Meals and incidentals are paid per day at a flat rate. GSA pays $69.00 on the first and last day of travel, three quarters of the $92 daily rate.
  • A 4-day trip has 3 nights of lodging and 4 days of meals, which is why the two counts differ.
  • Continental U.S. only. Alaska, Hawaii, U.S. territories and foreign locations are set by the Department of Defense and the State Department, not GSA, and are not in this dataset.
  • Your employer sets its own policy. A private employer is under no obligation to use these rates, and federal agencies apply their own travel rules on top of them.
Technical details

Method per-diem-v1.0.0Data gsa-perdiem-conus-fy2026-v1

Guide

GSA per diem for a CONUS trip

CostAnswer editorialIndependent calculator publisher

Federal travel per diem uses GSA lodging ceilings by locality and date, plus meals and incidental expenses (M&IE). Lodging is per night; M&IE is per calendar day, with first and last day at three-quarters. Type a city or ZIP. This is not travel authorization.

Nights are not days

A Tuesday–Thursday trip has two lodging nights and three M&IE days. Mixing those counts is the usual way a voucher estimate comes out wrong. Seasonal localities also change the lodging cap by month; the page prices each night in the month that night falls in.

ZIP codes that sit in two GSA rates

A ZIP maps to a county. GSA sometimes carves a city out of that county. When that happens, the page quotes the county rate and offers the city rate. Pick the one that matches the trip. Unlisted counties use the state standard CONUS rate. That is a normal answer, not a failed lookup.

Questions about this calculator

What is the standard CONUS rate?

GSA’s default lodging and M&IE for locations in a state that are not separately listed. A ZIP whose county is not a named locality gets that state standard rate.

Can I use this on a federal travel voucher?

Use it to see the ceiling before you file. It is not authorization, not agency policy, and not the voucher your travel office accepts. Lodging tax sits outside the GSA cap under those rules.

Does this cover Alaska or Hawaii?

No. GSA CONUS rates do not set those locations. DoD and State Department tables are not in this dataset.

Terms used here

M&IE
Meals and incidental expenses, a daily GSA amount, reduced on first and last travel days.
CONUS
Continental United States. This dataset does not cover OCONUS.
Locality
A GSA-listed city or county with its own lodging ceiling.

Practical tips

  • If the hotel is over the cap, the page shows what fits under the ceiling and what sits above it. Your authorizing official still has to sign.
  • Type the ZIP of the duty location, not the airport you flew through, unless that is where you slept.

Limits and caveats

  • GSA ceilings from a stored snapshot, not travel orders. Not legal advice for a voucher dispute.

Results are for information. They are not legal, tax, medical, or financial advice. How the math is maintained · Report a wrong figure.

Engine notes

Rounding, versioning, and omissions that sit beside the guide rather than repeating it.

  • Nights and days are different counts. Lodging is a nightly ceiling and meals are paid per day, so a three-day trip has two nights of lodging and three days of meals. Getting those two counts confused is the most common way a per diem estimate comes out wrong.
  • Three quarters on travel days. GSA pays 75% of the daily meals and incidentals rate on the first and last day of travel. The reduced amounts are published, not derived, so a 68 dollar day shows GSA's own 51 rather than a rounding of it.
  • Seasonal lodging caps. GSA sets lodging month by month, and many destinations cost more in season. Each night of a trip is priced against the month that night falls in, so a stay crossing into high season is not flattened to one rate.
  • A ZIP is a county lookup, not a GSA field. GSA publishes rates by city and county, not by ZIP code. A five-digit ZIP is mapped through the Census ZCTA-to-county file, then to a GSA locality. If GSA carves a city out of that county, the ZIP cannot tell them apart and both rates are offered. If that county is not listed on its own, the result is the state standard CONUS rate, which is the usual answer, not a failed lookup.
  • A real room rate is a ceiling check. Lodging is reimbursed at what you actually pay, up to the cap. Entering a nightly rate compares it with each night's ceiling and says whether the stay is within the limit or over by a dollar amount. Lodging tax is reimbursed separately and is not in that comparison.
  • What is not covered. Continental U.S. only. Alaska, Hawaii, U.S. territories and foreign locations are set by the Department of Defense and the State Department rather than GSA, and are not in this dataset. Lodging tax is reimbursed separately and is not in the cap.

Calculation receipt

What each number here is

This answer is built from published figures. Each one is named below, with the release it came from.

VERIFIEDGSA per diem
Sets the figures this answer is made of. Without it the page says so rather than estimating.

If a source above is unavailable or out of date: The lodging ceiling and M&IE tier for a destination are the rates GSA sets. A trip on or after 1 October takes the next fiscal year’s file, which is why the effective release matters as much as the newest one.

Sources

Where this data comes from

U.S. General Services AdministrationSource: U.S. General Services Administration, FY2026 per diem rates for the continental United States (CONUS). Snapshot gsa-perdiem-conus-fy2026-v1.GSA · FY 2026 ↗GSA meals and incidental expenses breakdownThe published split across breakfast, lunch, dinner and incidentals, and the first and last day of travel amounts.FY2026 ↗U.S. Census Bureau ZCTA-to-county relationship fileSource: U.S. Census Bureau, 2020 ZCTA to county relationship file. Used only to turn a ZIP code into the county GSA prices against. Snapshot census-zcta-county-2020-v1.2020 ↗

Next

People working through dates and hours usually need these next.

EverydayBusiness daysCount workdays between two dates, or add workdays to a date. Federal holidays are optional.CarRoad-trip fuelFuel cost for a drive from your miles, MPG, and the most recent EIA regular-gas average for your state or region. You can type a pump price instead.EverydayDate offsetFind the calendar date a given number of days, weeks, months, or years before or after another date. Month ends are clamped.EverydayDays from todayThe calendar date that is N days from today, or N days ago. Weekends still count; this is not business days.EverydayAgeCompleted years, months, and days from a birth date to a selected as-of date, including leap-day rules.EverydayTime durationsAdd or subtract hours, minutes, and seconds as durations. Negative results stay signed and normalized.