Age Eligibility Calculator
Work out whether you are within the age limit for a government post — on the cut-off date the notification uses, with the relaxation for your category applied.
A general age calculator will not answer this. Recruitment does not reckon your age today, and the upper limit is not the same for everyone.
As printed on your matriculation certificate — that is the date boards use.
The cut-off date in the notification, not today. This is the field people get wrong.
These are the usual central government relaxations. State rules and some posts differ — check your notification.
The two things candidates get wrong
Age is reckoned as on a cut-off date, not today
Every notification states a date on which age is calculated — often the closing date for applications, but frequently the first day of a month several months earlier or later. A candidate who is 27 years and 2 months today may well have been 26 years and 8 months on the stated date, and it is that figure the board uses. Enter the date from your own notification in the second field, not the date you are reading this.
The date of birth that counts is on your matriculation certificate
Not your Aadhaar card, not your PAN card, not the date you typed into the form. Where these differ, the matriculation certificate is what boards accept, and a mismatch discovered at document verification ends the candidature at that point — after you have cleared the written exam. If you know yours differ, correct the record before you apply rather than after.
Upper age relaxation
The figures in this tool are the usual central government relaxations:
- OBC, non-creamy layer — three years
- SC and ST — five years
- PwBD — ten years, and cumulative with category, so thirteen for OBC and fifteen for SC or ST
- Ex-servicemen — three years, plus the length of service rendered. Put the service years in the extra relaxation field
- Widows and divorced women — commonly to age 35, higher for some posts and states
State commissions set their own, and some posts carry additional relaxations for departmental candidates, state domicile, residents of particular districts, or specific sports quotas. The extra relaxation field is there for those. Where your notification differs from these figures, the notification is right and this tool is not.
The certificate matters as much as the eligibility
Claiming a relaxation you cannot document is worse than not claiming it. The certificate generally has to be in the format prescribed in the notification, issued by a competent authority, and — for OBC non-creamy layer in particular — within its validity period on the cut-off date. An expired or wrongly formatted certificate is treated as no certificate at all, and the application is then assessed at the unreserved limit.
If you are just over the limit
Before giving up on a post, check three things: whether the notification carries a relaxation you have not selected here, whether the recruiting body has issued a one-time age relaxation for that cycle, and whether the cut-off date is earlier than you assumed. All three are common enough to be worth the five minutes.