GSA Per Diem Rates

GSA Per Diem Rates is the federal government's official lookup for lodging and meals & incidental expenses (M&IE) reimbursement rates for official travel within the continental United States (CONUS). It is operated by the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) and used by travelers, travel approvers, and finance staff across federal agencies — including DoD components — to set and validate per diem allowances on travel authorizations and vouchers.

What it is

GSA per diem rates cap the amount federal travelers can be reimbursed for lodging and M&IE at a given CONUS location on a given date. GSA publishes the rates through a searchable web lookup by city, state, or ZIP code, plus downloadable flat files and a public API, at gsa.gov/perdiem. The current tool lives at gsa.gov/travel/plan-book/per-diem-rates; the older URL gsa.gov/portal/content/104877 now redirects there. Rates are set on a fiscal-year basis — GSA maintained the FY2025 CONUS rates unchanged into FY2026, with the standard lodging rate at $110/night and the standard M&IE rate at $68/day (M&IE tiers ranging $68–$92), per GSA's FY2026 per diem bulletin. GSA also publishes M&IE meal/incidental breakdowns and periodic Federal Travel Regulation (FTR) per diem bulletins when rates change.

Who operates it

The General Services Administration, through its Office of Government-wide Policy, sets and publishes CONUS per diem rates under the Federal Travel Regulation. Rates for non-foreign OCONUS locations (Alaska, Hawaii, and U.S. territories) are set separately by the Department of Defense's Per Diem, Travel and Transportation Allowance Committee and published via the Defense Travel Management Office. Rates for foreign locations are set by the Department of State. GSA's per diem pages link out to both of those rate sets rather than hosting them directly.

Access

The GSA per diem lookup is fully public with no login, account, or CAC required. GSA's official "Per diem contacts" page routes travel-policy questions through a general inquiry form; it does not publish an org-level help-desk email address or phone number for per diem rate questions specifically. A separate GSA digital-services mailbox handles technical/API issues with the per diem data feed, distinct from rate-policy questions.

How logisticians use it

Federal and military logisticians and travel approvers use the GSA per diem tables to build travel authorizations and settle vouchers, most often indirectly through the Defense Travel System (DTS), which pulls from these published rates rather than requiring manual lookup. Accurate per diem figures are a routine input to TDY/PCS cost estimation, travel voucher review, and command travel-budget planning.

Related systems

GSA per diem rates are a companion reference to the Defense Travel System (DTS) and its per diem query function, the Joint Travel Regulations (JTR), and the DoD Per Diem Committee's non-foreign OCONUS rate tables (published via the Defense Travel Management Office). Foreign per diem rates are maintained separately by the Department of State.