Calculate per diem travel allowances for meals, lodging, and incidentals based on destination and federal/company rates.
This calculator takes a nightly lodging rate, a daily meals-and-incidentals (M&IE) rate, and a trip's departure and return dates, then totals the reimbursement owed for the stay: the full lodging rate for each night stayed, plus M&IE for each day, with the first and last calendar day of travel paid at 75% of the M&IE rate under the standard federal travel rule. You supply the rates yourself, whether a GSA locality rate you looked up or a flat company rate - the tool does not fetch or verify current rates. The detail people miss most: the 75% cut applies only to M&IE, never to lodging.
A concrete input and expected output from the current implementation.
Input
Destination: Washington, DC. Lodging rate: $258/night. M&IE rate: $79/day. Trip: depart Oct 1, 2026, return Oct 4, 2026 (3 nights).
Expected output
Lodging: 3 nights x $258 = $774. M&IE: 2 full days x $79 = $158, plus 2 travel days (Oct 1 and Oct 4) at 75% of $79 ($59.25 each) = $118.50. M&IE subtotal $276.50, rounded to $277. Total per diem: $1,051.
Lodging is billed at the full nightly rate for all 3 nights stayed; M&IE is paid at the full $79 rate for the 2 full days at the destination and at 75% for the departure and return days, per the federal first/last-day travel rule.
You enter a nightly lodging rate, a daily M&IE rate, and the trip's departure and return dates. The tool counts nights for lodging (one per night stayed) and days for M&IE (one per calendar day of travel), multiplies each by its rate, and sums the two subtotals into a single reimbursable total for the trip.
Per 41 CFR 301-11.101, the day of departure and the day of return are each paid at 75% of the full M&IE rate rather than the full rate, since a traveler is assumed not to incur a full day of meal expense on a day spent partly in transit. Full days at the destination are paid at 100%. Lodging is never prorated - each night stayed is billed at the full rate entered.
No. It only totals the lodging and M&IE rates you enter; it does not look up or store GSA locality rates. Find your destination's current rate on the GSA per diem rate lookup before entering it here, since rates are set annually and vary by location.
It can, if you enter the correct OCONUS or foreign per diem rate yourself - those are set by the Defense Department (OCONUS) or State Department (foreign areas), not GSA, and use separate rate tables. The calculator's arithmetic is the same either way; finding the right rate is on you.
The example and behavioral notes were checked against the browser implementation. Standards and primary references below define the relevant format, formula, or platform behavior.
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