Guard & Reserve · 2026 DFAS pay table
Guard & Reserve Drill Pay: The 1/30th Rule, Explained
By MilPayGuide · Reviewed against official rate tables · August 2026
There is no secret reserve pay table. Guard and Reserve drill pay is the active-duty basic pay table — the same one — divided by 30. Once you know that, every drill paycheck becomes checkable arithmetic.
The rule
One inactive-duty training period (a “drill”) pays 1/30th of the monthly basic pay for your grade and years of service. A standard drill weekend is four periods — two on Saturday, two on Sunday — so it pays 4/30ths of the monthly figure. In 2026, an E-4 over 4 years has a monthly rate of $3,659.00, which makes one drill $121.97 and a standard weekend $487.88. Notice the quirk this creates: a drill weekend pays four days' worth of pay for two days of work, because each day holds two paid periods.
Annual training pays by the day
Annual training (AT) and other active-duty days work differently: each day pays 1/30th of monthly basic pay — one period per day, not two — plus allowances. On AT you draw BAS, and a housing allowance as well: a flat non-locality reserve-component rate for tours under 30 days, or the full locality BAH rate once a tour reaches 30 days. That is why a two-week AT check doesn't look like simply seven drill weekends: 14 AT days are 14 paid periods, while seven weekends are 28 — so the basic-pay part of AT is about half of seven weekends' worth, and the allowances added on AT close some, not all, of that gap.
What a typical year adds up to
The standard participation year is 48 drill periods (one weekend a month) plus 14 days of annual training — 48 + 14 = 62 paid periods, each worth 1/30th of your monthly rate. From the 2026 table, in basic pay alone:
- E-4 over 4 years: about $7,562.14 for the year.
- E-6 over 10 years: about $9,837.54.
- O-3 over 6 years: about $15,989.80.
Treat these as floors, not forecasts: extra duty days, schools, mobilizations, and bonuses all add to them, and units schedule more or fewer periods in a given year. The estimate to carry in your head is simply your monthly rate ÷ 30 × paid periods.
What drills don't pay
Inactive-duty drills pay basic pay only. No BAS, and — outside narrow exceptions — no BAH. That makes the drill-weekend figure cleaner than an active paycheck but also smaller than the same grade's active-duty daily economics, where tax-free allowances are a third or more of total compensation. Drill pay is also fully taxable, federal and (depending on your state) state — several states exempt Guard and Reserve pay the same way they exempt active-duty pay, which is covered in the state income tax guide.
Checking your own numbers
Find your grade and years of service on the 2026 pay chart, divide by 30, and multiply by the periods on your LES. If the arithmetic and the deposit disagree, the usual suspects are a years-of-service column change mid-month, a promotion effective date, or periods paid in a different cycle than you expected — your unit administrator can pull the breakdown. The calculator gives you the active-duty monthly figure that all of this divides from.
Common questions
- How is drill pay calculated?
- One inactive-duty drill period pays 1/30th of the monthly active-duty basic pay for your grade and years of service. There is no separate reserve pay table — it is the same DFAS table active members are paid from, divided by 30. A standard drill weekend counts four periods (two per day), so it pays 4/30ths of the monthly figure.
- How much is a drill weekend worth in 2026?
- From the 2026 table: an E-4 over 4 years earns $487.88 for a four-period weekend, an E-6 over 10 years $634.68, and an O-3 over 6 years $1,031.60 — before taxes, and before any allowances that a given status does or doesn't add.
- Do you get BAH and BAS for drill weekends?
- Generally no — inactive-duty training pays basic pay only, with narrow exceptions. Longer active-duty periods are different: annual training and other active-duty days pay 1/30th of basic pay per day plus BAS, and a housing allowance — at a non-locality reserve-component rate for tours under 30 days, and the full locality BAH rate for tours of 30 days or more.
- Does a promotion or years-of-service step change drill pay?
- Yes, identically to active duty — drill pay is the active-duty table divided by 30, so anything that moves you on that table (promotion, crossing a longevity mark, the annual January raise) moves every drill check by the same proportion.