For 2026, the IRS and GSA chose not to raise or lower per diem amounts. The standard rates from 2025 will continue to apply across the continental United States.
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Per diem should not feel like a maze. Below you will find an at-a-glance card with the 2025 numbers, what changed this year, and quick answers to the questions travelers and finance teams ask most, including the 75% first and last day rule.
If you are managing real-world trips, the policy is only half the story. Incidentals and folio chaos are where time and money disappear. Engine helps teams book per-diem-friendly stays, cover incidentals (no personal cards, fewer check-in issues), and consolidate folios so reconciliation takes minutes, not days.
Each year, the General Services Administration (GSA) and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) release updated federal per diem rates for business travel. For 2026, the agencies have announced that per diem rates will remain the same as 2025. This means employers, employees, and government contractors will see no adjustments in daily lodging and meal allowances when traveling for work within the continental United States (CONUS).
While many expected minor increases to match inflation, the decision to keep 2025’s rates provides consistency and predictability for budgets heading into the new year. For organizations that rely on per diem guidelines to control travel expenses, this stability can make financial planning easier.
2026 Standard CONUS Per Diem Rate
High-Cost Areas in 2026
As in previous years, certain destinations still qualify for higher per diem allowances due to elevated lodging costs. These high-cost areas are listed by the GSA in their annual publication. While the standard CONUS rate stays the same, travelers visiting high-cost markets should review the GSA’s updated list to confirm the specific daily maximums.
Why the Rates Didn’t Change
The decision to maintain 2025 levels reflects the government’s analysis of travel cost data. With inflation pressures easing compared to prior years, the agencies determined that existing rates remain sufficient for typical travel needs.
For employers, this removes uncertainty around fluctuating reimbursement policies. For employees, it may mean tighter budgets in markets where hotel and meal prices continue to rise.
How Per Diem Works
To recap, per diem is a daily allowance employers use to cover lodging, meals, and incidental expenses for employees traveling on official business. Instead of tracking every receipt, employers can rely on IRS-approved per diem amounts to streamline expense reporting and reimbursement.
- Lodging: Hotel costs per night
- Meals and Incidentals (M&IE): Daily allowance for meals, tips, and minor expenses
- CONUS vs. OCONUS: Rates differ for travel inside the continental U.S. versus overseas or non-continental territories
What This Means for Employers and Travelers
- Employers benefit from consistent budgeting and reimbursement policies year over year.
- Employees may need to plan carefully in higher-cost destinations where per diem limits may not fully cover real-world expenses.
- Government contractors continue to use per diem as the benchmark for lodging compliance and expense reporting.
The High-Low Substantiation Method
Instead of looking up an exact rate for every city, the IRS allows a simplified high-low method for expense substantiation. The IRS sets two flat rates: $319 per day for designated high-cost localities, and $225 per day for every other CONUS location. You classify each destination once and apply the matching rate going forward.
Check the current IRS high-cost locality list to see which destinations qualify. Cities like San Francisco, New York, Boston, and Washington, DC typically qualify as high-cost. Most other cities, including Phoenix, Nashville, and Kansas City, fall under the standard "other localities" rate.
The advantage of the high-low method is that it removes the need to look up individual city rates, which makes the policy easier to explain to travelers and easier for accounting to audit. The tradeoff is that you may overpay in some markets and underpay in others. That averaging effect works out fine if your organization travels to a broad, consistent mix of locations, but it is a weaker fit if most of your travel concentrates in one or two cities.
One limitation to flag for Finance: self-employed individuals and sole proprietors cannot use the high-low method for their own per diem deductions. They must use the standard, location-specific method. The high-low method is available to employers reimbursing employees, not to individuals substantiating their own return.
Field Operations and Crew Travel Guidance
Knowing the rate is only the starting point. The harder problem is building a per diem process that holds up when crews are spread across job sites, assignments change on short notice, and Finance still needs clean, auditable records.
Prepaid or Reimbursement
Prepaid per diem works better for longer projects, since crews should not have to front weeks of hotel and meal costs out of pocket. Reimbursement works fine for short trips where a few days of expenses will not strain a traveler’s personal finances.
For example, a 12-person crew working a three-week out-of-town project at the standard CONUS rate would need each member to front more than $3,700 individually under a pure reimbursement model. Prepaying, or covering lodging and incidentals directly through a booking platform, removes that burden. Booking extended-stay properties with weekly rates is one of the more reliable ways to keep real lodging costs under the daily allowance.
Using the High-Low Method for Crews That Move Often
When a team hits a different rate zone every few days, doing a fresh per-city lookup each time slows everyone down. Field teams with frequent location changes, such as multi-state installation or inspection crews, are usually better served by the high-low method described above: classify each stop as high-cost or standard once, then apply the flat rate without re-checking GSA tables on every trip.
Handling Multiple Locations in a Single Day
When one assignment spans more than one per diem rate zone, use the rate for wherever the crew sleeps that night, not the rate for the overall project’s home base. Multi-week rotational assignments in remote areas are a common case: a single project can cross two or three rate zones, so tracking per diem daily, rather than for the project as a whole, keeps reimbursements accurate.
Remote job sites also sometimes carry their own elevated per diem designations due to limited local lodging supply. Confirm the current rate on GSA.gov rather than assuming the standard CONUS rate applies.
Different Roles, Different Rates
Transportation industry workers who sleep in their vehicles (long-haul drivers, for example) use a separate, higher M&IE-only rate than employees who stay in hotels. Keep these policies clearly separated on mixed crews: a driver and an inspector on the same job may be entitled to different daily allowances, and conflating the two creates avoidable reconciliation headaches for Finance.
M&IE-Only for Day Trips
When employees drive to a site and return home the same night, use the meals-and-incidentals portion of the rate only. There is no lodging cost to reimburse. If circumstances change and the trip becomes an overnight stay, switch to the full per diem rate for that day.
Track Per Diem by Project, Not by Employee Alone
Set up your expense system to tag per diem spend by job or project code, not only by employee. Project-level tracking makes it possible to bill clients accurately and to see what a specific job actually cost, which a purely employee-level view cannot show.
This also supports the documentation Finance needs for IRS substantiation. A simple tracking sheet that records dates, locations, and project assignments alongside the per diem paid gives you an audit-ready record without adding a heavy approval process on top of it.
Frequently Asked Questions Regarding Per Diem & the IRS
