How much is an army pension after 6 years?
How much you get after 6 years depends on your scheme and final pensionable pay. As a guide, 6 years on a £45,000 final salary gives roughly £3,857 a year on AFPS 05, plus a tax-free lump sum of around £11,571. Use the calculator for your own figures.
Key takeaways
- On AFPS 05 (£45,000 final salary), 6 years gives about £3,857/yr plus a £11,571 tax-free lump sum.
- AFPS 05 pension = final pay × years ÷ 70; the lump sum is three times the annual pension.
- AFPS 15 builds 1/47th of career-average pay a year, with no automatic lump sum, so you commute for cash.
- Leaving this early usually means a preserved pension (or an EDP if you qualify), not an immediate pension.
Your details
Scheme, pay & service
Your estimate
Pension, lump sum & EDP
EDP 05 (left before 65)
How this is worked out
AFPS 05 accrues 1/70th of final pensionable pay per year, up to a maximum of 57%. Figures use published AFPS rates. See our methodology. Estimate only, not financial advice.
What six years' service is actually worth
Six years is short by pension standards, so the headline figures are modest, but they are real money and they are yours. On AFPS 05, a £45,000 final salary over six years gives roughly £3,857 a year for life, plus an automatic tax-free lump sum of about £11,571. On AFPS 15, the same pay and service builds a little more, around £5,745 a year, because the career-average accrual rate of 1/47th is more generous than the older 1/70th, though AFPS 15 pays no automatic lump sum. These are illustrative figures based on the rules and constants this site uses, not a forecast for any one person.
The single biggest driver of your number is your pensionable pay, not the scheme. Double the pay and you double the pension. That is why a £30,000 earner and a £60,000 earner with identical six years of service end up in very different places: on AFPS 05 the first gets about £2,571 a year with a £7,714 lump sum, the second about £5,143 a year with a £15,429 lump sum. Six years also sits well below every immediate-pension and Early Departure Payment threshold, so for almost everyone leaving at this point the benefit is a preserved pension you collect later, not cash on the way out.
One thing to settle first: have you actually crossed the two-year qualifying line? You need at least two years of paid service to earn any AFPS pension at all. Below that you usually get a refund of your contributions rather than a preserved pension. At six years you are comfortably past that gate, so you have a genuine, protected entitlement that sits and waits for you whether you stay in or leave.
The maths behind each scheme
AFPS 05 is the easiest to picture because it is final salary with a flat accrual. The formula is final pensionable pay multiplied by years, divided by 70. So six years on £45,000 is 45,000 times 6, divided by 70, which lands on about £3,857 a year. The tax-free lump sum is simply three times the annual pension, so around £11,571. There is a long-stop maximum of 57% of final pay, but you only reach that near 40 years of service, so it never bites at six.
AFPS 15 works differently. It is a Career Average Revalued Earnings, or CARE, scheme. Each year you bank 1/47th of that year's pensionable earnings into a pot, and that pot is revalued every year to keep its buying power. Because the in-service revaluation broadly tracks earnings, entering your current pensionable pay gives a sound estimate of the whole pot, which is why the working shorthand is pay times years, divided by 47. Six years on £45,000 gives about £5,745 a year. There is no automatic lump sum on AFPS 15; if you want tax-free cash you commute, which I cover further down.
AFPS 75 is the oldest final-salary scheme and the rules are a little different again. Your pension is based on the representative pay rate for your final rank, not necessarily the exact salary on your last payslip, and it builds in a straight line to a maximum of 48.5% of that pay over a full career, which is 34 years for officers or 37 years for other ranks. Because the per-year slice is smaller, six years on a £45,000 proxy pay comes out around £3,539 for an other-ranks profile or about £3,851 for an officer profile, each with a three-times lump sum on top. This site uses the pay you enter as a proxy for the representative rate, because the public does not hold the MOD's rank-by-rank tables.
Worked examples at different pay levels
Here is an illustrative run at six years across three pay levels on AFPS 05, the scheme most six-year leavers from that era sit in, using only the rules above. At £30,000 final pay: about £2,571 a year, with a £7,714 tax-free lump sum. At £45,000: about £3,857 a year, with an £11,571 lump sum. At £60,000: about £5,143 a year, with a £15,429 lump sum. The pattern is strictly proportional, so you can scale it to your own pay by simple ratio.
On AFPS 15 the same three pay levels give larger annual pensions because of the 1/47th rate, but remember there is no lump sum unless you commute. At £30,000 you build around £3,830 a year, at £45,000 about £5,745, and at £60,000 about £7,660. If you wanted some tax-free cash from those, you would surrender up to a quarter of the pension at the fixed 12:1 rate, which I explain in the lump-sum section.
Treat all of these as illustrative. Your real entitlement turns on your exact pensionable pay history, the precise length of your reckonable or qualifying service down to the day, and, for anyone who served across the 2015 transition, the McCloud choice for the remedy period. The arithmetic here is the right shape, but it is not a substitute for a personal forecast.
At six years you get a preserved pension, not an immediate one
The honest headline is that six years is too short for an immediate pension or an Early Departure Payment on any scheme. What you walk away with is a preserved, or deferred, pension. It is calculated now on your pay and service at the point you leave, then it is revalued each year to protect it against inflation until it comes into payment. You do not lose it by leaving; it simply waits for you.
When you can claim it depends on the scheme. A preserved AFPS 75 pension is normally paid from age 60. A preserved AFPS 05 pension is paid from age 65. A deferred AFPS 15 pension is paid at your State Pension age, and it sits on top of your State Pension rather than replacing any of it. AFPS 15 does allow you to draw the deferred pension early from age 55, but only with a permanent actuarial reduction, meaning a smaller pension for the rest of your life in exchange for getting it sooner.
Early Departure Payments only start much further up the service ladder. EDP 05 needs broadly 18 years' service and age 40 at exit; EDP 15 needs broadly 20 years and age 40, the so-called 20/40 point. AFPS 75 has no EDP at all; its early route is the Immediate Pension, which an officer reaches after 16 years from age 21 and an other rank after 22 years from age 18. None of those are in reach at six years, so do not budget for a bridging income now. If you are aiming for one, the next milestone pages on longer service show how the figures climb.
Lump sums and tax: what is automatic and what you commute
On the two final-salary schemes the lump sum is automatic and tax-free. AFPS 75 and AFPS 05 both pay three times your annual pension as a one-off tax-free sum when the pension comes into payment. So the six-year AFPS 05 figures above carry an £11,571 lump sum on £45,000, with nothing you need to do to claim it beyond the pension itself coming into payment.
AFPS 15 is the exception: there is no automatic lump sum. To get tax-free cash you commute, which means giving up part of your annual pension in exchange for a one-off payment. The rate is fixed at 12:1, so every £1 of yearly pension you surrender returns £12 of lump sum, and HMRC caps the amount you can commute at 25% of your pension benefits. The trade is permanent, so it is a genuine decision about cash now versus income for life, not a free extra.
The tax treatment is the part people most often get wrong. The lump sum, whether automatic on AFPS 75 and 05 or commuted on AFPS 15, is paid free of UK income tax. The ongoing pension, by contrast, is taxable income like any other pension once it is in payment, though it only bites if your total income for the year is above your personal allowance. Pensions already in payment also rise with inflation; the increase from April 2026 is 3.8%, in line with CPI.
What can move your number up or down
Pensionable pay is the lever that matters most. The schemes work on pensionable pay, which is not always the same as gross pay; some allowances do not count. A promotion, an X-Factor change, or a pay-band movement near the end of your service feeds straight into a final-salary figure, and into the career-average pot on AFPS 15. If your pay rose late in those six years, your estimate based on current pay may be slightly generous for past years on a final-salary scheme.
The McCloud remedy is the other big one for anyone who served across the relevant dates. The remedy period runs from 1 April 2015 to 31 March 2022. If you had service in that window, you will be offered a choice between your legacy scheme, AFPS 75 or 05, and AFPS 15 for that period, made through a Remediable Service Statement. The right choice can be worth a meaningful amount and depends on your own numbers, so it is not one to guess. From 1 April 2022 everyone still serving builds AFPS 15 regardless.
Smaller factors still move the needle: exactly how your reckonable service is counted, any earlier breaks in service, transferred-in pensions from other schemes, and whether you are modelled as an officer or other rank on AFPS 75, which changes the per-year accrual slice. The calculator on this site lets you flex pay, years, leaving age and scheme so you can see how sensitive your own figure is before you commit to any decision.
How to check your own position and what to do next
Start with the calculator on this page. Put in your own pensionable pay, your exact years of service, your leaving age and the right scheme, and it will return an estimate built on the same constants used throughout this site. Try it on more than one pay level if your salary is still moving, so you can see the range rather than a single point. Remember it is an estimate, not a regulated financial advice service.
For a figure you can rely on, request an official forecast from Veterans UK. Serving members use form 12; those who have already left with a preserved pension use form 14. That forecast reflects your actual service record, the representative pay tables this site cannot hold, and any McCloud position, so it is the document to lean on for real decisions. This site is independent and is not affiliated with the MOD, Veterans UK or JPAC.
A few practical pointers before you act. Keep copies of your annual benefit statements, because they are the simplest record of what you have built. If you are weighing leaving against staying, look at the longer-service scenarios too, since the jump from a preserved pension to an EDP or Immediate Pension changes the picture dramatically. And if money is genuinely on the table, take regulated advice from an adviser who understands public-sector schemes before you commit, particularly around commutation and any transfer out.
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Frequently asked questions
James Hartley
James Hartley spent 22 years in the British Army, including unit personnel administration and pensions and records duties, and now writes the scheme guides and scenario pages on this site. He is not a regulated financial adviser, so the content is general information rather than personal advice.
Sources: gov.uk · GAD factors · Veterans UK · Forces Pension Society · MoneyHelper.