NPS returns by pension fund: Scheme E, C and G in 2026

Ten managers, one set of rules

Every NPS pension fund runs the same schemes under the same investment rules. Scheme E holds equity, Scheme C corporate bonds and Scheme G government securities, and each fund publishes a daily NAV to NPS Trust. That makes the National Pension System unusually easy to compare: when two managers' Scheme E returns differ, the only explanation is how they picked stocks.

Ten pension funds now run the full set. We computed their returns from those NAVs, to 1 October 2026, on the Tier I schemes that carry the tax deductions. Returns over a year are annualised. The full tables, including Tier II and the government schemes, are on our NPS returns page.

Scheme E: a bad year inside a good decade

Sorted by five-year return. A dash means the fund is too young for the period.

Every Scheme E fund lost money over the year. Losses ran from 4.01% at Aditya Birla Sun Life to 8.26% at DSP, and the median was a fall of 6.22%. September alone took a large share of it: the Nifty 50 fell 6.1% in the month, as our September market recap records.

Over longer periods the picture reverses. The median Scheme E fund returned 8.19% a year over three years, 8.08% over five and 11.68% over ten. HDFC Pension Fund leads over ten years at 11.99%; ICICI leads over five at 8.64%.

The spread between managers is narrow. Over five years the best and worst funds were 1.63 percentage points a year apart, and over ten, 1.33. That gap is real money over a working life, but it is small next to the choice of how much to put in equity at all.

Scheme E against a Nifty 50 index fund

An index fund is the obvious comparison for an NPS equity allocation. We took the median Direct Growth Nifty 50 index fund, from our index fund list, over the same periods:

Scheme E came out ahead over every period. It is not a like-for-like race: a pension fund's equity scheme is not confined to the fifty Nifty stocks, and its managers pick and weight their own. Cost is not the difference either way, since pension fund management fees are a fraction of a percentage point, comparable to the cheapest index funds.

Two caveats keep this from being a verdict. First, five years is one market regime, and a stretch in which the Nifty's largest stocks lead could narrow or reverse the gap. Second, an NPS account is not as free as an index fund: Tier I is locked until 60, and at least 20% of the corpus must buy an annuity at exit. Our guide to NPS against mutual funds works through that trade.

Scheme C and G: steadier, and close together

Scheme C, the corporate bond scheme, returned about 4.8% over the year while equity fell. HDFC Pension Fund's Scheme C has the best five-year record, at 6.59%. Scheme G returned only 2.12% over the year, well below the interest its bonds pay, which means their prices fell as yields rose; our explainer on bond yields and bond fund prices covers why.

The debt managers sit even closer together than the equity ones: less than half a point a year separates the best and worst Scheme C fund over five years. In debt, the choice of manager barely matters.

What happened to Scheme A

Scheme A, the alternative-assets scheme, no longer exists. PFRDA merged it into Schemes C and E by a letter dated 13 December 2025, and subscribers were allowed one free switch before the merger. Its last NAV was published on 16 January 2026. NPS Trust has shown a placeholder NAV of 10 since, which would read as a 50% loss if taken at face value; our pages stop each Scheme A record at its last real NAV. SBI Pension Funds' Scheme A, for example, returned 9.94% a year over five years to that date.

What to do with this

• Decide the equity share first. Scheme E fell 6% in a year in which Scheme C rose 5%. Your mix between them matters more than your manager. Our post on Auto Choice and Active Choice covers who should set it themselves.
• Then look at the manager, over five years or more. One-year rankings shuffle every year. You can change pension fund once a financial year and your asset mix up to four times, under PFRDA's rules.
• Check the tax. The extra ₹50,000 deduction for your own contribution is old-regime only; NPS tax benefits lists every deduction.
• Project your own numbers. The NPS calculator shows what a monthly contribution could grow to at a rate you choose. These returns are a sense check for that rate, not a forecast.

How we calculated this

Returns are computed from the daily NAVs NPS Trust publishes, on each scheme's original (POP) variant, to 1 October 2026. Returns over a year are annualised (CAGR). A NAV is struck after the pension fund's management fee; charges taken by cancelling units, such as point-of-presence and record-keeping fees, are not in it, so an individual account's return will be slightly lower. Index fund figures are the median across Direct Growth Nifty 50 index funds with a record for each period: 23 funds for one year, 16 for three, 14 for five and 9 for ten. Past returns do not predict future ones, and nothing here is advice.