BAH and BAS Together in 2026: What Your Allowances Actually Add Up To
BAH and BAS are two separate lines on your LES with two different rules. Here is what each pays in 2026, how they stack on top of base pay, and why the combined number is the one that matters when you sign a lease.
Most pay questions get asked one allowance at a time. What is my BAH. What is BAS this year. But nobody signs a lease with one line of their LES. The number that decides whether an apartment works is base pay plus BAH plus BAS, and those three move on completely different rules. One is a national table by rank and years of service, one changes with your ZIP code, and one is a flat monthly figure that is the same for a private in Alaska and a staff sergeant in Georgia.
Here is what each one pays in 2026, how they stack, and the two places the combined number surprises people.
BAS 2026: a flat rate, and it is not per person
Basic Allowance for Subsistence covers your own food. Not your family's, not your spouse's - yours. That is why it is flat. In 2026 it pays:
- Enlisted: $476.95 a month
- Officer: $328.48 a month
Enlisted members get more than officers, which surprises people every time. The two rates come from different baskets: the enlisted rate tracks the USDA food cost index for a moderate-cost food plan, the officer rate comes from a separate statutory calculation that has been running since 1953.
There is a third rate, BAS II at $953.90 a month, which is double the enlisted rate. It goes to enlisted members in permanent party status at a location where there is no government mess available and the member is required to pay for meals. You do not choose it, your command situation does.
BAS does not change by location. A soldier at Fort Drum and a marine in San Diego draw the same $476.95.
BAH 2026: the number that moves everything
Basic Allowance for Housing is the opposite. It is set by three things: your ZIP code, your paygrade, and whether you have dependents. Nothing else.
The spread is enormous. For an E-5 with dependents in 2026, across all 339 military housing areas:
- Lowest: $1,185 a month
- Median: $2,064 a month
- Highest: $5,127 a month
That is a $3,942 gap between the cheapest and most expensive housing area for the same rank in the same year. San Diego pays that E-5 $3,975 with dependents and $3,147 without. A PCS can change your housing allowance more than a promotion ever will.
Run your own ZIP through the BAH calculator rather than working from a number a friend at another base quoted you.
Stacking them: the number to plan against
Take an E-5 with dependents at San Diego in 2026:
| Line | Monthly |
|---|---|
| BAH (San Diego, with dependents) | $3,975.00 |
| BAS (enlisted) | $476.95 |
| Base pay | varies by years of service |
The allowances alone come to $4,451.95 a month. Add base pay from the 2026 pay table and you have the figure a landlord or a lender actually cares about. The full paycheck calculator does all three at once so you are not adding lines by hand.
Two things that catch people out
The allowances are not taxed, so the comparison to civilian salary is not apples to apples. BAH and BAS are excluded from federal gross income. That $4,451.95 in allowances is take-home. To match it, a civilian salary has to gross considerably more before tax. This is also why lenders treat military allowances favorably when they qualify you - they will often gross the figure up.
Moving into the barracks changes both lines, and not by the same amount. Live in government quarters without dependents and your full locality BAH stops. What replaces it is not zero but close: a table called Partial BAH, which pays an E-5 $8.70 a month. BAS usually continues, unless the command situation puts you on a meal card arrangement. The delta between drawing full BAH and drawing partial is the single largest swing in military pay that does not involve a promotion or a deployment.
What is not in either number
Neither allowance covers utilities as a separate line, neither moves mid-year when rents move, and neither is paid to a dependent directly. BAH is set once a year from rental data collected the previous spring, so a market that spiked in the autumn does not show up in your allowance until the following January. If you are in that position, the 2026 BAH changes page shows which housing areas went up and which fell.
Bottom line
BAS is flat and small. BAH is variable and large. Together they are usually the bigger half of a junior member's compensation, and the only way to know your combined figure is to run your own ZIP and paygrade. Start with the combined paycheck calculator, then check the BAH rate for anywhere you might PCS to next.