Indian Currency Denominations

Banknotes currently in circulation

The Reserve Bank of India currently issues six denominations of banknote in general circulation, spanning ₹10 to ₹500. All are legal tender for any amount and are readily accepted everywhere.

Coins currently in circulation

Coins currently issued range from ₹20 down to ₹1, plus smaller-denomination coins (50 paise and below) that remain technically legal tender but are rarely seen in day-to-day transactions and are excluded from the calculator for that reason.

Denominations that are no longer legal tender

Two withdrawals explain most of the confusion people have about which notes they can still use.

• The old ₹500 and ₹1000 notes (the pre-2016 series) were demonetised by the Government of India on 8 November 2016 and have not been legal tender since; they cannot be used in transactions and are not part of this calculator.
• The ₹2000 note, introduced after the 2016 demonetisation, has since been withdrawn from circulation by the RBI as part of a phased 'Clean Note Policy' exercise. It remains legal tender and can still be exchanged or deposited at RBI Issue Offices, but it is no longer accepted for exchange at regular bank branches and is not commonly used in day-to-day transactions, so it is excluded from this calculator's denomination list.
• Very old, physically damaged, or heavily mutilated notes of any denomination may need to be exchanged at a bank branch rather than spent directly, under RBI's note-exchange rules, even though the denomination itself remains valid.

Why the cash calculator matches this exact list

The cash calculator on this site includes exactly the currently-issued, generally circulating denominations listed in the tables above: notes from ₹500 down to ₹10, and coins from ₹20 down to ₹1. That's a deliberate choice, not an oversight; a denomination calculator is only useful if every row corresponds to money you can actually still hold and spend, so withdrawn or demonetised denominations are left out rather than included as dead rows nobody needs. If RBI issues a new denomination or withdraws an existing one in the future, this reference page and the calculator's row list would both need to be updated to match, since a currency denomination change is a legal-tender event, not something that happens on a predictable schedule. The calculator itself runs entirely in your browser; see the privacy policy for details on what is and isn't stored.

How to tell a note is genuine at a glance

While a full authentication check needs proper lighting and a closer look, every current Mahatma Gandhi (New) series note (₹500, ₹200, ₹100, ₹50 and ₹20) shares a few features worth knowing when you're counting a stack by hand: a see-through register on the left that lines up correctly when held up to light, a watermark showing Mahatma Gandhi's portrait, a security thread running through the note that reads Bharat/RBI in an alternating pattern, and a latent image showing the note's denomination when tilted at an angle. A note that's missing these features entirely, or feels noticeably different in texture from the rest of the stack, is worth setting aside and checking more closely rather than counting into your total. See the guide to counting cash quickly and accurately for the full sorting and verification method this pairs with.

Notes and coins by size, at a glance

Beyond the printed number, Indian banknotes are also deliberately sized differently by denomination, larger notes generally correspond to higher values, which is a useful secondary check when you're sorting a mixed pile quickly by feel as well as by sight, especially in low light. Coins follow a similar principle: higher-value coins tend to be larger or use a distinct bimetallic (two-tone) design compared to lower-value coins, which is part of why the ₹10 and ₹20 coins are easy to tell apart from the ₹1, ₹2 and ₹5 coins even without reading the numeral.