Internship Stipend Calculator 2026 — Benchmark What to Pay an Intern in India

Your role

RoleLocationWork modeDurationCompany sizeLarger organisations and GCCs anchor the band higher — candidates price the brand in.Number of interns

Benchmark band — monthly stipend

₹18,000 – ₹48,500

For a software development intern in Bengaluru, 3 months, in office, at a mid-market (200–1,000).

Fills fastest at ₹35,000 – ₹42,500

The upper-middle of the band. This is where you get enough applications to actually choose, rather than accepting whoever applied.

Midpoint stipend₹33,500 / month

Monthly cost — 1 intern₹33,500

Full 3-month programmeStipend only — see the hiring cost calculator for the loaded figure₹1,00,500

Below ₹18,000 is where roles stall. Under-priced listings in this category typically take two to three times longer to fill, and a larger share of the interns who do accept leave mid-internship for a better offer — which costs more than the money saved.

What the live market is paying

Live figures are temporarily unavailable. The benchmark band above does not depend on them. Our published stipend data lives at /salary.

Two kinds of number on this page, kept apart on purpose. The benchmark band is editorial — a range built from role, city, duration, work mode and company size. The livefigures are computed by our API from active listings on MyInternships.in that state a real stipend. We publish bands rather than one decimal-place “average” because no one in this market has that precision, and pretending otherwise would make the tool useless to you.

Publish the number

Listings that state a stipend get substantially more applications than "as per company norms". Candidates read an unstated stipend as a low one, and the strongest applicants filter it out before you ever see them.

Price the role, not the person

Set the band before you meet anyone. Deciding the stipend after you have met a candidate you like is how two interns doing the same work end up on different money — which they will discover.

Budget the whole programme

Stipend is typically 40–60% of what an intern actually costs once mentor hours, equipment and screening time are counted. Budget the total, or the programme gets cut halfway through.

Questions employers ask

How much should I pay an intern in India?+

There is no single number — it moves with the role, the city, the length of the internship and the size of your company. A content-writing intern in Indore and a machine-learning intern in Bengaluru are not in the same market. The calculator gives you a benchmark band for your exact combination, and a narrower "fills fastest" band inside it. As a rule of thumb, a role priced below the bottom of its band takes two to three times longer to fill and attracts candidates who leave the moment something better appears.

Is it legal to offer an unpaid internship in India?+

There is no central statute banning unpaid internships outright, and unpaid internships still exist — particularly in NGOs, media and some academic-credit programmes. But the practical picture matters more than the legal one. If the intern does work you would otherwise pay someone to do, an unpaid arrangement invites classification and reputational risk, and it filters your applicant pool down to candidates who can afford to work for free. On our platform, paid listings receive several times the applications of unpaid ones for the same role. Take your own legal advice on classification; treat the pay decision as a hiring decision.

Where do these numbers come from?+

Two sources, kept separate on purpose. The live figures — labelled as such — are computed by our API from active internship listings on MyInternships.in that carry a real stipend. The benchmark band is editorial: a range built from role, city, duration, work mode and company size. We show bands rather than a single fabricated "average" because a single number implies a precision that nobody in this market actually has.

Should a remote intern be paid less?+

A little less is defensible; a lot less is a false economy. Remote roles remove the intern's commute and relocation cost, which is why the calculator applies a modest discount. But remote internships compete in a national market rather than a local one, so a remote role priced at small-town levels is competing against Bengaluru budgets for the same candidate. In practice the discount that still fills is roughly 5–10%, not 40%.

Does a higher stipend actually get better interns?+

Up to a point, and then it stops mattering. Moving from the bottom of the band to the middle changes both the volume and the quality of applications noticeably. Moving from the middle to the top mostly changes speed — you fill faster and lose fewer candidates to competing offers. Above the band, extra money buys very little; at that point what wins candidates is the work itself, a named mentor and a credible conversion path.

What else counts as cost besides the stipend?+

Usually more than the stipend itself. Sourcing and screening time, mentor hours, a laptop or workstation, onboarding, access and admin all land on the same budget line. Our Intern Hiring Cost Calculator adds those up — for most teams the stipend is between 40% and 60% of the true cost of an intern.

Should the stipend change with internship length?+

Slightly. Very short internships (one month) rarely justify a premium because the intern barely gets past ramp-up. Six- and twelve-month internships usually pay a little above the three-month rate, because you are asking the candidate to commit through a semester or to defer other options. The calculator applies that adjustment automatically.

Internship Stipend Calculator