GSA Per Diem Rates: Lodging & Meals by City

Official U.S. government travel per diem rates for corporate travel, expense and government contracting teams. Enter a city and state or a zip code and a fiscal year, and get the GSA lodging rate for each month plus the daily meals and incidental expenses (M&IE) rate.

What you get

One row per location:

• The lodging rate for each month of the fiscal year
• The daily meals and incidental expenses (M&IE) rate
• City, county, state and zip, and whether the standard rate applies

Who this is for

• Corporate travel and expense compliance teams checking the official GSA rate before approving a travel expense report.
• Government contractors who must bill travel expenses at GSA per diem rates under their contract terms.
• Relocation and HR teams budgeting travel or temporary housing costs against the federal standard.

Input

Field	Type	Description
locations	array	[{ "city": "Austin", "state": "TX" }] or [{ "zip": "78701" }]. Cities not on GSA's specific list automatically return the standard CONUS rate.
year	integer (default 2026)	Federal fiscal year to look up.
apiKey	string (optional)	Your own free key from api.gsa.gov. Falls back to the public DEMO_KEY, which works but may be rate-limited under heavy batch use.

{
  "locations": [
    { "city": "Austin", "state": "TX" },
    { "zip": "10001" }
  ],
  "year": 2026
}

Getting your own free API key

The built-in DEMO_KEY works out of the box for testing and light use. For larger batches, get a free key in a couple of minutes at open.gsa.gov/api/perdiem and pass it as apiKey.

Output

One record per location per rate period found:

{
  "rowType": "rate",
  "location": { "city": "Austin", "state": "TX" },
  "city": "Austin",
  "county": "Travis",
  "state": "TX",
  "zip": null,
  "year": 2026,
  "isStandardRate": false,
  "mealsRate": 80,
  "monthlyLodgingRates": [
    { "month": "January", "lodgingRate": 187 },
    { "month": "February", "lodgingRate": 187 },
    { "month": "March", "lodgingRate": 187 }
  ]
}

rowType is "rate", or "error" for a location that couldn't be looked up. A location GSA has no rate for comes back as a "rate" row with found: false.

isStandardRate is true when the location isn't on GSA's list of specifically-priced cities and got the standard CONUS rate instead, so you can tell the two cases apart in bulk lookups.

How it works

Direct calls to the official GSA Travel Per Diem API (api.gsa.gov), the same data behind GSA's own per diem lookup tool. No scraping, no proxy.

Pricing note

Billed per location checked, not per monthly rate row returned — one charge per location whether it resolves to a specifically-priced city with 12 monthly lodging rates or the flat standard CONUS rate.

Related products

• Federal Contract Awards: for GovCon teams tracking federal contract awards rather than travel billing rates