PPF, NPS and Sukanya Samriddhi Yojana all show up on the same “best tax-saving investments” lists, and it’s easy to assume they’re interchangeable Section 80C boxes to tick. They’re not. Each one is built for a different job — one guarantees a fixed return, one is market-linked and retirement-specific, and one only exists if you have a daughter. Picking the wrong one doesn’t cost you money exactly, but it does mean locking funds into a scheme that isn’t actually matched to your goal, sometimes for 15-21 years.
PPF: fixed, guaranteed, for anyone
Public Provident Fund pays a government-set rate — currently 7.1% p.a., unchanged since April 2020 — compounded annually, with zero market exposure. You can open one at any age, deposit up to ₹1,50,000 a year, and the entire thing is EEE: your contribution, the interest, and the maturity amount are all tax-free. The trade-off is a 15-year lock-in (extendable in 5-year blocks) and a return that won’t beat equity over the long run. PPF is the right tool when you want capital preservation with a tax break, not growth. Run your own numbers on the PPF Calculator.
NPS: market-linked, retirement-only, more flexible than it used to be
National Pension System money is invested in a mix of equity, corporate bonds and government securities that you choose, so your return isn’t fixed — it’s tied to market performance, typically planned around a long-term 9-11% assumption rather than promised. NPS is retirement-locked: you generally can’t touch it until 60. What changed recently matters: under PFRDA’s December 2025 rules, the mandatory annuity share dropped from 40% to 20% for corpuses above ₹12 lakh, and smaller corpuses (under ₹8 lakh) can now be withdrawn 100% as lump sum. It’s also the only one of the three with an extra ₹50,000 tax deduction under Section 80CCD(1B), on top of the regular 80C limit. See your projected corpus and exit split on the NPS Calculator.
Sukanya Samriddhi Yojana: the highest rate, but only for a daughter
SSY currently pays 8.2% p.a. — the highest of any small savings scheme — but eligibility is narrow: it’s only for a girl child, opened before she turns 10, with a hard cap of two accounts per family. Deposits run for the first 15 years from account opening; after that the balance just keeps compounding, untouched, until the account matures 21 years after it was opened (not 21 years after her birth — a distinction that trips a lot of parents up). Like PPF, it’s fully EEE. If SSY doesn’t apply to your situation, it simply isn’t an option — there’s no equivalent scheme for a son. Check your own numbers on the Sukanya Samriddhi Yojana Calculator.
Which one actually fits your goal
If you want a guaranteed, tax-free floor under your savings with no market risk, PPF is the default — everyone’s eligible, and 7.1% locked in beats a lot of “safe” alternatives after tax. If you’re specifically building a retirement corpus and can tolerate market swings over a 20-30 year horizon, NPS’s equity exposure and extra ₹50,000 deduction generally win on pure growth, especially now that more of the corpus can come out as lump sum. If you have a daughter under 10, SSY’s 8.2% fixed rate is difficult to beat for a goal 15-21 years out, and it doesn’t compete with PPF or NPS at all — it’s additive, not a substitute. Most households end up using two of the three, not one: PPF or NPS for retirement, SSY layered on top if there’s a daughter to plan for.
None of this replaces knowing what you actually have available to invest each month — start there with the Net Salary / Take-Home Pay Calculator, then split what’s left across whichever of these three schemes actually match your goals. For the fuller picture of what else YogiCalc covers, see Introducing YogiCalc.
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