2021 GSA Per Diem Rate
For 2021, the GSA Per Diem Rate figures are $96 (Standard CONUS lodging rate), $55 (Standard CONUS M&IE rate), $56 (Lowest M&IE rate tier) and $76 (Highest M&IE rate tier).
Effective 2020-10-01 through 2021-09-30Source: Maximum Per Diem Reimbursement Rates for the Continental United States (CONUS), FY 2021 (GSA Per Diem Bulletin FTR 21-01) (GSA)Verified 2026-09-02
Compared with 2020
Every figure on this page is unchanged from 2020.
| Item | 2020 | 2021 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Standard CONUS lodging rate | $96 | $96 | +$0 (+0.0%) |
| Standard CONUS M&IE rate | $55 | $55 | +$0 (+0.0%) |
| Lowest M&IE rate tier | $56 | $56 | +$0 (+0.0%) |
| Highest M&IE rate tier | $76 | $76 | +$0 (+0.0%) |
Who it applies to
Federal employees travelling on official business inside the continental United States, and the agencies that reimburse them. These are maximum reimbursement rates set by GSA under the Federal Travel Regulation: an agency may pay up to the lodging rate for a night's room and up to the M&IE rate for a day's meals and incidental expenses, in any location GSA has not set a non-standard rate for. They are not the IRS high-low per diem rates, which are what a private employer or a self-employed taxpayer uses to substantiate a business travel deduction.
What changed this year, and why
Nothing in the standard rates moved for fiscal 2021. The standard CONUS lodging rate remains $96 a night, the standard CONUS M&IE rate remains $55 a day, and the non-standard area M&IE tiers remain $56 to $76. The one change GSA records is a new non-standard area for Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Common questions
- What is the standard CONUS lodging rate for fiscal 2021?
- $96 a night, unchanged, for travel performed on or after October 1, 2020, through September 30, 2021.
- What is the standard CONUS M&IE rate for fiscal 2021?
- $55 a day, also unchanged, with the non-standard area tiers holding at $56 to $76.
- Why does this page give one standard rate instead of the rate for my city?
- GSA publishes the per-city and per-county lodging and M&IE rates only as a lookup grid at gsa.gov/perdiem, where a location's row crossed with a column holds a bare amount with no sentence around it. This site publishes figures a document states in words, so what it carries is the standard CONUS rate the Federal Register notice states in its own prose. A city GSA has not listed takes that standard rate anyway.
The first and last day of a trip pay three quarters of the M&IE rate
A trip's first and last day are not reimbursed at the full meals and incidental expenses rate. GSA pays three quarters of the M&IE rate for the traveller's temporary duty location on each of those two days, on the reasoning that a departure day and a return day do not each contain a full day of meals away from home. The rate that gets cut is the one for the place being travelled to, not the one for the traveller's own official duty station, which is the part people get wrong when they work a reimbursement out by hand. GSA publishes the already-reduced amount for every location in the meal breakdown table on its own site, under a heading for the first and last day of travel, so the arithmetic does not have to be redone.
On the first and last travel day, Federal employees are only eligible for 75 percent of the total M&IE rate for their temporary duty travel location (not the official duty station location).
Per diem rates frequently asked questions (GSA)
What happens when no room can be had at the maximum rate
The lodging figure on this page is a ceiling on ordinary reimbursement, not a promise that a room exists at that price. Where a federal traveller cannot find one within the established rate, the Federal Travel Regulation lets the employing agency authorise the actual expense allowance instead and reimburse what the room actually cost, up to triple the established per diem rate for that location. It is an authorisation rather than an entitlement: the agency has to approve it, normally before the travel happens, and GSA's own guidance asks the traveller to check FedRooms first to confirm that nothing is available at the per diem rate. The Federal Travel Regulation sets the allowance out in its own actual expense subpart, which is the part of the rules an agency travel manager will point to when approving one.
In addition, if a Federal employee cannot find a room within the established per diem rates, the travel policy allows the agency to reimburse the actual hotel charges up to 300 percent of the established per diem rates.
Per diem rates frequently asked questions (GSA)
Standard locations, non-standard areas, and the city that is on neither list
GSA sets a rate of its own for the non-standard areas, which are the places the federal community travels to often enough for GSA to review them every year. Everywhere else is a standard CONUS location, and standard locations are deliberately not listed one by one on the per diem site. So an address that returns nothing from GSA's lookup has not been left out by mistake. Check the county first: where the city is unlisted but its county is listed, the county's rate governs the whole county, that city included. Where neither the city nor the county appears, the location takes the standard CONUS rate published at the top of this page. That is why the standard rate is what most federal travel is actually reimbursed against, rather than an obscure fallback.
If the city is not listed, but the county is, then the per diem rate is the rate for that entire county. If the city and the county are not listed, then that area receives the standard CONUS location rate.
Per diem rates frequently asked questions (GSA)
Who this rate is actually for
GSA's per diem rates are the reimbursement ceiling that federal agencies use when their civilian employees travel on official business inside the continental United States. CONUS covers the 48 contiguous states and the District of Columbia. The rates set two components: a lodging allowance and a meals-and-incidental-expenses (M&IE) allowance. For 2021, the standard CONUS lodging rate is $96 per day and the standard CONUS M&IE rate is $55 per day. Individual localities can have higher rates than the standard figure; GSA publishes a county-by-county list so a traveler heading to a specific destination can look up the exact amount the agency will reimburse. The standard figure is a floor for high-cost areas and the maximum everywhere else. Travel outside CONUS - Alaska, Hawaii, U.S. territories, or foreign countries - is priced by different agencies (DOD or the State Department), not by GSA's CONUS table. The page's calculator lets you enter a destination to pull up the locality's own lodging and M&IE numbers rather than the nationwide standard.
The U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) establishes the per diem reimbursement rates that federal agencies use to reimburse their employees for subsistence expenses incurred while on official travel within the continental U.S. (CONUS), which includes the 48 contiguous states and the District of Columbia.
Per diem rates frequently asked questions (GSA)
What you have to keep and hand over to get reimbursed
Anyone traveling on federal official business has to back up what they claim with paperwork. The rule is straightforward: for lodging, a receipt is always required; for any other authorized expense, a receipt is required once the individual charge is over $75. If a receipt cannot be produced, the traveler must give their agency a reason it finds acceptable - simply losing the slip is not enough on its own. The regulation governing this is Federal Travel Regulation 301-11.25, and it applies at every official temporary travel destination. In practice, this means a federal traveler should keep hotel folios and itemized meal or incidentals receipts and turn them in with the travel voucher. Expenses below the $75 threshold for non-lodging items may be claimed without a receipt, but the agency can still ask for documentation, so holding onto receipts is the safer course. Without the required receipts, the agency can deny reimbursement for that portion of the claim.
For any official temporary travel destination, you must provide a receipt to substantiate your claimed travel expenses for lodging and receipts for any authorized expenses incurred costing over $75, or a reason acceptable to your agency explaining why you are unable to provide the necessary receipt (see Federal Travel Regulation 301-11.25).
Per diem rates frequently asked questions (GSA)
Money you do not spend on the room cannot be shifted to meals, or the other way around
Federal employees on official travel cannot take money they save on their hotel room and add it to their meals allowance, and they cannot do the reverse either. Under the Federal Travel Regulation, lodging and meals-and-incidental-expenses (M&IE) rates are separate categories with their own rules. The lodging per diem is a maximum amount - a traveler only receives reimbursement for the actual lodging costs they incur up to that maximum. If the hotel costs less than the lodging rate, the unused portion does not become extra spending money for meals. The regulation does not allow mixing and matching between the two categories. Likewise, if a traveler chooses to spend less on meals, they cannot shift the unused M&IE amount to pay for a more expensive hotel room. For 2021, the standard CONUS lodging rate is $96 and the standard CONUS M&IE rate is $55; each figure applies only to its own category. At the highest-cost localities, the M&IE tier is $76, and at the lowest tier it is $56 - but no portion of either amount can be transferred to lodging.
For federal employees, the Federal Travel Regulation (FTR) does not make a provision for “mixing and matching” reimbursement rates. The lodging per diem rates are a maximum amount; the traveler only receives actual lodging costs up to that maximum rate. Therefore, there is no “extra” lodging per diem to add to the M&IE rate. Likewise, the M&IE per diem cannot be given up or transferred to lodging costs.
Per diem rates frequently asked questions (GSA)
GSA's rate does not automatically govern a contractor's pay or a trucker's tax deduction
GSA's per diem figures exist for one audience: federal civilian employees on official travel. The agency explicitly states that it sets rates and policies for federal travelers only and cannot answer questions about how much to pay a contractor. A contractor working on a federal contract is governed by the terms of that contract and by their own employer's travel policy, so the right contact is the contracting officer or the contractor's company. The same boundary applies to owner-operator truckers asking how much they can deduct for meals on their taxes - that is an Internal Revenue Service question, not a GSA one. The IRS and the Department of Transportation are the places to direct those inquiries. In other words, even though a self-employed trucker or a consulting firm may use GSA's published locality rates as a convenient reference, GSA does not set their reimbursement, their pay, or their deduction. Those are driven by contract clauses and tax rules outside GSA's authority.
GSA establishes per diem rates and related policies for federal travelers on official travel only, and cannot address specific inquiries concerning the payment of contractors.
Per diem rates frequently asked questions (GSA)
A hotel's advertised GOV rate is not the same thing as the federal per diem rate
Hotels frequently advertise a "GOV" rate for guests who show federal ID, but that quoted price is a commercial discount, not the government's per diem figure. The two numbers can be higher or lower than each other, and the traveler is responsible for knowing which one applies. If the hotel's GOV rate comes in above the federal per diem rate for that locality, the traveler must obtain actual-expense authorization before the trip in order to be reimbursed for the full amount; otherwise reimbursement is capped at the per diem. The rule is set out in FTR Chapter 301, Subpart D (Actual Expense), and agencies may add their own guidance on top of it. For 2021, the standard CONUS lodging rate is $96 and the M&IE tiers run from a lowest of $56 to a highest of $76, with locality-specific figures above those standards in expensive cities. A traveler should compare the hotel's GOV rate to the GSA-published rate for the county and get approval in advance if the hotel's price exceeds the per diem.
It is the traveler’s responsibility to know the federal per diem reimbursement rates, and should not assume a GOV rate is the same as the federal per diem rate.
Per diem rates frequently asked questions (GSA)
How each figure was verified
Each number below was read from a stored copy of the document named beside it, and checked to occur word for word in the quoted sentence. The digest is of that stored text.
- Standard CONUS lodging rate
The standard CONUS lodging rate will remain unchanged at $96.
- Standard CONUS M&IE rate
The standard CONUS M&IE rate remains at $55
- Lowest M&IE rate tier
the M&IE NSA tiers remain at $56-$76.
- Highest M&IE rate tier
the M&IE NSA tiers remain at $56-$76.