Basic allowance for housing (BAH)

The basic allowance for housing (BAH) is a monthly allowance toward the cost of housing that the Department of Defense sets by pay grade, duty location and whether the member has dependents. This site publishes no BAH rates: they differ for every location, and the official calculator is the place to read them.

What it is

Section 403 of title 37 of the United States Code provides the basic allowance for housing. Unlike basic pay, which is one table for everyone, BAH is a set of rates that the Department of Defense determines for each military housing area, by pay grade and by whether the member has dependents. The rate a member is entitled to depends on facts about that member's assignment and household that this site does not hold.

Where the rates are

The Defense Travel Management Office publishes the rates in its BAH Rate Lookup, where a duty location, pay grade and dependent status return the rate for the year. The page loads in an ordinary web browser; DTMO's servers refuse automated downloads (HTTP 403), which is why this site cannot ingest the rates and does not show them.

What is not here

• No BAH rates, and no page for any ZIP code, base or city.
• No estimate of what housing allowance a member would receive; the subsistence allowance and basic pay are the tables DFAS publishes for all members at once.

About these figures

FastWages is not affiliated with the Department of Defense, DFAS or any military service. The tables reproduce what DFAS publishes, cell for cell, and are reference data: they are not pay, career or financial advice, and what a member is actually paid depends on facts this site does not know. Nothing on these pages is compared with civilian wages.

• How military pay is structured and how the military pay raise is set, in Learn.
• Take-home pay calculator on our sister site FastCalc; this site computes nothing.
• All military pay tables and federal civilian pay.