Aadhaar: what each service costs, what it really takes, and what it does not do
UIDAI’s portal will walk you through the screens. What it will not tell you is which services you cannot do from your phone at all, which fields you can only ever change once, and that an Aadhaar update reaches your bank, your PAN and your subsidy mapping exactly never.
Free · No signup · No Aadhaar number or PAN asked for
What brought you here?
Six things send people looking for help with an Aadhaar. Pick the one that describes your afternoon; each leads to the page that actually answers it.
What has gone wrong, or what are you trying to do?
- I downloaded the file and it will not open
First four letters of the name in CAPITALS, spaces skipped, then the year of birth in four digits.
Never type a space: UIDAI’s own SAI KUMAR → SAIK1990 example shows the space passed over and the fourth letter taken from the second word. A full stop inside the first four is kept, as in P. KUMAR → P.KU1990, and a short name is not padded. If that still fails, there are eight other causes and one of them is that you are not holding an e-Aadhaar at all.
The password, and the nine reasons it fails → - I need to link my Aadhaar with my PAN
Check whether you already are. It is free and takes under a minute.
A large share of the people asking turn out to be linked already. If you are not: ₹1,000 under rule 158(10) of the Income-tax Rules, 2026, paid before the request and not refunded if the request fails — which is the whole argument for checking first.
Linking, the fee, and every failure path → - I need to change a detail — address, mobile, date of birth
Is the detail a name?
- No — address, mobile, date of birth, gender, photo or biometrics
Address and mobile number can be done from UIDAI’s Aadhaar app. Everything else needs an enrolment centre.
The in-app mobile change needs an OTP to the number already on record, so it works while that number still reaches you. And three fields are capped for life: name twice, gender once, date of birth once. Read the limits before spending one.
The update matrix, limits and lifecycle → - Yes — a name
A correction and a legal change are different requests with different proof.
And you get two name updates in a lifetime, so the difference is expensive to get wrong. That subject has a page of its own on this site.
Name correction in Aadhaar →
- No — address, mobile, date of birth, gender, photo or biometrics
- My bank says my Aadhaar is not linked
Is this about opening or operating the account, or about a subsidy?
- The account itself — KYC
A bank cannot compel it. Give it if you choose to, knowing that.
In 2018 the Supreme Court struck down section 57 of the Aadhaar Act and held the rules compelling bank linking unconstitutional. Banks still ask, because it is quick and customers offer it — but “the bank says it is mandatory” and “it is mandatory” are different statements.
- A subsidy that has stopped arriving
This is NPCI seeding, not KYC. Check the seeding status first.
Your bank knowing your Aadhaar number does not make that account the one the government pays into. The seeding is done by the bank on its own mandate and consent form after you ask at the branch, and the status is checkable on myAadhaar and on NPCI’s portal. Giving the bank your Aadhaar again will not fix it.
- The account itself — KYC
- My PAN has gone inoperative
Almost always an unlinked PAN — and rule 162(2) restores it within thirty days of intimation.
Inoperative is not cancelled. The PAN still exists and is still yours; what it cannot do meanwhile is get you a refund or attract the ordinary rate of deduction. Check the linking status before paying anything.
Inoperative, surrendered and invalid → - Nothing is working and I want to complain
There are several routes and they are good for different things.
No page in this cluster carries an escalation procedure, because that subject is covered in full on its own page rather than half-covered in six places.
Complaining to UIDAI →
Every figure named here carries its source and the date it was checked on the page it belongs to. Charges as published by UIDAI, and the PAN fee as prescribed by rule 158(10) of the Income-tax Rules, 2026; both checked 10 September 2026.
The mobile number registered with your Aadhaar gates almost every online service — and it can now be changed in UIDAI’s app, but only while it still reaches you.
The download, the address update, the status check, the offline e-KYC and the confirmation of a PAN linking request all authenticate by a one-time password sent to the number on the record — not to a number you supply at the time. UIDAI’s Aadhaar app will now change that number on face authentication together with an OTP; where you no longer have access to the old number, or never registered one, UIDAI requires an Aadhaar Seva Kendra visit instead. So a stale registered number is not fatal, but it does close off the convenient routes, and it is usually discovered at a bank counter with a queue behind you. Two things stay open without it: an Aadhaar PVC card can be ordered on any other mobile number, and a centre can print your Aadhaar on biometric authentication.
SourceUIDAI FAQ — the Aadhaar app(opens in a new tab)UIDAI — Aadhaar enrolment and update charges(opens in a new tab)Aadhaar Act, 2016 — s. 31(opens in a new tab)
Aadhaar is administered by UIDAI, a central authority, so unlike a domicile or income certificate there genuinely is one national rule, one national process and one national fee for each service. What changes without notice is the fee itself and the list of documents UIDAI accepts as proof. Every charge on this page therefore carries the date it was checked and a link to UIDAI’s own page, and where UIDAI publishes a list rather than a principle we describe the categories and send you to the list. This page asks for no Aadhaar number and stores nothing — nothing here needs your Aadhaar number, and you should be suspicious of any page that does.
Six things send people looking for help with their Aadhaar: opening the downloaded PDF, updating a detail, linking it to a PAN, working out why a bank says it is not linked, getting a card again, and complaining when none of that works. UIDAI’s own portal will walk you through the screens for each. What it will not tell you is what each service actually costs, which of them you cannot do online at all, which fields you can only ever change once, how long each really takes as against the stated figure, and — the one that costs people most — that an Aadhaar update propagates to precisely nothing. That is what this page is for.
Key takeaways
- One national rule. Unlike a domicile or income certificate, Aadhaar has a single central authority, so there really is one process, one charge and one timeline for each service — which is why this cluster gives figures where the certificates cluster refuses to.
- The registered mobile number gates almost everything. Every online Aadhaar service authenticates by an OTP to it — including, now, the change of the number itself in UIDAI’s Aadhaar app. That in-app route works while the old number still receives messages; once it is gone the fix is a centre visit, which is inconvenient rather than fatal.
- Three fields are capped for life: name twice, gender once, date of birth once. Almost nothing written about Aadhaar mentions this before telling you how to change them.
- An Aadhaar update reaches your bank, your PAN, your subsidy mapping and your ration entitlement exactly never. Every one of them is a separate action afterwards.
- The PAN linking requirement moved on 1 April 2026 — it is section 262(6) of the Income-tax Act, 2025 and rule 162 of the Income-tax Rules, 2026 now. The Income Tax Department’s own help page was still citing the repealed provision when this was last checked.
- Nothing on this site asks for your Aadhaar number, and nothing needs to. Be suspicious of any page that does.
Where each service sits, and what depends on what
Aadhaar services are not a flat list — several of them are blocked until something earlier is right. This is the order dependencies actually run in, which is not the order the portal presents them in.
- 1
A working registered mobile number
Everything below depends on it, and it is the only one that cannot be fixed online. If the OTP does not arrive, stop and fix this at an enrolment centre before planning anything else.
What needs a centre, and what does not → - 2
Access to the record — downloading and reading the e-Aadhaar
Once the OTP arrives you can see what UIDAI actually holds about you. Do this before assuming anything: a surprising share of the problems below turn out to be a name or a date of birth that is not what the person believed.
Opening the file → - 3
Getting the record right — the updates
Address online; mobile, date of birth, gender and biometrics at a centre; names on a page of their own. Three fields are capped for life, so this stage rewards deciding the final value before submitting anything.
The update matrix and the limits → - 4
Making the record agree with PAN
The linking request matches the two records as strings, so it is blocked until the previous stage is finished. Check the status first — you may already be linked, and the fee is paid before the request and not refunded.
Linking Aadhaar with PAN → - 5
Making the rest of the world agree — the downstream sweep
Nothing propagates. The bank, the NPCI mapper that pays your subsidy, the PAN, the ration entitlement, the provident fund record and the insurer are each a separate errand, and the sweep takes longer than everything above it put together.
The fan-out, and who does each one → - 6
When a stage will not move
Escalation is a subject in its own right, with several routes that are good for different things. No page in this cluster carries a grievance procedure; that page does.
Complaining to UIDAI →
The dependency running through this is the reason the hub exists: the portal presents these as six independent services, and they are not independent.
What Aadhaar can and cannot be used for
Worth two paragraphs before anything else, because a good deal of the frustration in this area comes from being asked for an Aadhaar by somebody who is not entitled to demand it.
Aadhaar is a twelve-digit identity number issued by UIDAI under the Aadhaar Act, 2016. It is used to establish identity, and it is the basis on which a great many government benefits and subsidies are delivered. Where a benefit is funded from the Consolidated Fund of India, requiring Aadhaar for it is on firm ground.
What is not on firm ground is a private company demanding it. In 2018 the Supreme Court struck down section 57 of the Aadhaar Act, which had allowed private entities to require Aadhaar authentication, and held the amended Prevention of Money-laundering Rules compelling bank linking to be unconstitutional. Compulsory linking of Aadhaar to bank accounts and to mobile SIMs failed the proportionality test. What survived, and was expressly upheld, is the linking of Aadhaar with PAN.
In practice a bank will still ask, because Aadhaar-based verification is quick and cheap and because customers offer it. The point is not that you should refuse — it is that "the bank says it is mandatory" and "it is mandatory" are different statements, and knowing which one you are dealing with changes the conversation.
Every Aadhaar service, and what it actually takes
The router table above sorts by what you are trying to do. This one sorts by service, for readers who already know the name of the thing they need and want to know what it involves.
| Service | Where it is done | Online or centre | What you need | Charge | Realistic timeline |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Download the e-Aadhaar | myAadhaar portal | Online | The registered mobile number, working, for the OTP | Free | Immediate — and the file is password-protected |
| Open the downloaded file | Your own device | Neither | The first four letters of the name in capitals, spaces skipped, then the year of birth | Free | Immediate, when the password is right — and there are six reasons it is not |
| Order an Aadhaar PVC card | UIDAI, online | Online | The registered mobile number — or any other number, if none is registered | ₹75 | Posted to the address on record; handed to the post office within 5 working days |
| Refresh your proof-of-identity and proof-of-address documents | myAadhaar portal, or a centre | Either | The documents themselves, uploaded | Free online until 14 June 2027; ₹75 at a centre | A refresh of the documents behind what is already recorded — not a change of the details |
| Change the address | Aadhaar app, myAadhaar portal, or a centre | Either | An accepted proof of address, uploaded — or a family member’s Aadhaar under the Head of Family method | ₹75 | 30 to 90 days; about 90% within 30 |
| Update the mobile number | Aadhaar app, or a centre | App, if you still hold the old number | Face authentication, and an OTP to the new number — and to the old one where the app is registered elsewhere | ₹75 | Up to 30 days. A first-time registration is a centre visit |
| Update the date of birth or gender | Enrolment centre | Centre only | For a date of birth, the document UIDAI’s December 2025 SOP requires for your case; for gender, no document for the first update | ₹75 | Once in a lifetime each — read the limits first |
| Update biometrics or the photograph | Enrolment centre | Centre only | Yourself | ₹125, free in the mandatory biometric update age bands | 30 to 90 days |
| Correct or change the name | Covered on its own page | Depends on the evidence | A correction and a legal change take different proof | As a demographic update | Twice in a lifetime, and worth reading before spending one |
| Link Aadhaar with PAN | Income Tax e-filing portal | Online | Both numbers, and matching name and date of birth on the two records | ₹1,000 on a late intimation, under rule 158(10) | 4–5 working days for the payment to reflect; 30 days to operative under rule 162(2) |
| Seed a bank account for a subsidy | NPCI’s Bharat Aadhaar Seeding Enabler, or your bank’s own channels | Depends on your bank | Whatever your bank’s current seeding process asks for | Set by the bank | A different thing from bank KYC — see below |
| Complain when none of it works | Covered on its own page | Several routes | The enrolment ID or the request number | Free | Depends entirely on the route |
Charges from UIDAI’s published enrolment and update charges schedule, checked on 10 September 2026; the PAN fee as prescribed by rule 158(10) of the Income-tax Rules, 2026. UIDAI revises its charges without notice, which is why every figure here carries its date and a link. Note the two separate rows for documents and for the address: refreshing the documents behind your record is free online until 14 June 2027, while changing the address itself is a charged demographic update.
The registered mobile number gates almost everything
If you take one thing from this hub, take this.
Every online Aadhaar service — the download, the address update, the status check, the offline e-KYC, and the one-time password that confirms a PAN linking request — authenticates by sending a code to the mobile number registered against your Aadhaar. Not to any number you supply at the time. To the number on the record.
The number can now be changed from UIDAI’s own Aadhaar app, on face authentication together with an OTP — but only while you still have access to the number currently on record. That is the catch. Once the old number is gone, or if you never registered one, UIDAI sends you to an Aadhaar Seva Kendra, and a first-time registration is a centre visit either way.
So a stale registered mobile number is not the end of the world, and this page will not tell you it is. What it is, is the thing that quietly closes off the convenient routes, and it is usually discovered at the worst possible moment — at a bank counter, mid-transaction, with a queue behind you. Some things remain open without it: an Aadhaar PVC card can be ordered giving any other mobile number for the OTP, and an enrolment centre can retrieve and print your Aadhaar on biometric authentication.
If the number still works, changing it is a few minutes in the app. If it does not, it is one visit to a centre. Either way it is worth doing before it is urgent.
Try to download your e-Aadhaar from myAadhaar. If the one-time password arrives, your registered number is current — and while that is true, changing it later is an in-app job rather than a trip. If it does not arrive, you have found the thing to fix first, at a moment of your choosing rather than at somebody else’s counter.
What things cost, and how long they really take
UIDAI publishes charges, and it publishes them in more than one place, and it revises them. Every figure on this cluster therefore carries the date it was checked and a link to UIDAI’s own page, and where a figure could not be pinned to a UIDAI page it is not stated at all.
Two figures carry a known expiry. The free document update through myAadhaar runs until 14 June 2027, against ₹75 for the same submission at a centre; and UIDAI’s schedule waives the charge on an email-address update made through the Aadhaar app until 31 December 2026. Both are genuine, time-limited savings. Note what the first one is not: it is a refresh of the proof-of-identity and proof-of-address documents behind your record, not a free change of address. Changing the address is a demographic update and costs ₹75.
On timelines, UIDAI states that updating Aadhaar details typically takes 30 to 90 days depending on the type of update, and that normally about 90 per cent of update requests are completed within 30. Both numbers are useful and they are useful for different things. The 30 is what to expect, and it is also the point at which UIDAI itself says to raise a complaint — its own answer to an update pending beyond 30 days is the grievance route or the helpline.
Nothing else on this cluster carries a timeline, because nothing else has one from a primary source. Pages that tell you an Aadhaar update takes "7 to 10 days" are guessing, and a reader who plans around a guess is worse off than one who plans around the honest range.
The distinction that explains most bank-related confusion
Two things are both called "linking Aadhaar to a bank account" and they are not the same, which is why a person can do one, be told it is done, and still find the subsidy is not arriving.
The first is bank KYC — the bank recording your Aadhaar against your account for identification purposes. This is what most people mean, it is what most bank staff mean, and per the Supreme Court it is not something a bank can compel.
The second is seeding in the NPCI mapper. That mapping is what decides which of your accounts receives a direct benefit transfer. A person with four accounts, all of them holding their Aadhaar for KYC, has exactly one that is seeded — and if it is the wrong one, the money goes there. How the seeding is requested varies: NPCI operates a Bharat Aadhaar Seeding Enabler portal, and individual banks offer their own channels alongside the branch, so what is open to you depends on your bank. This page names the routes rather than asserting that only one of them exists.
The seeding status is checkable, on myAadhaar and on NPCI’s own portal, and checking it is the first thing to do when a subsidy stops arriving. It is not a KYC problem and it will not be solved by giving the bank your Aadhaar again.
A full page on this — including what to do when the bank and NPCI disagree, and how to move the mapping to a different account — is planned but not yet published. This section states the distinction, which is the part that matters most.
Linked for KYC: your bank knows your Aadhaar number. Seeded in the NPCI mapper: this specific account is the one the government pays into. Only the second determines whether money reaches you, and doing the first does not do the second.
What the portal will not tell you, on each service
UIDAI’s portal is a good portal. It is clear about the screens and it is the authoritative source for the charges. The gap is not accuracy — it is that a portal describes the happy path and nobody arrives at a portal on the happy path.
| The service | What the portal tells you | What it does not |
|---|---|---|
| Downloading the e-Aadhaar | The steps, and that the file is password-protected. | That the password skips every space — so a first name shorter than four letters runs on into the next word. UIDAI publishes SAI KUMAR → SAIK1990 and P. KUMAR → P.KU1990, which settle it between them, and almost nobody quotes them. |
| Updating a detail | Which fields exist and what they cost. | That three of them are capped for life, that beyond a cap the route is a Regional Office case rather than a portal transaction, and that what a date-of-birth update actually takes depends on what UIDAI already holds about your date of birth. |
| After an update | That the update is complete. | That nothing else in your life knows about it. Your bank, your PAN, the NPCI mapper and your ration entitlement are all still stale, and each is a separate errand. |
| Linking with PAN | The screens, on the Income Tax portal. | The fee amount in the walkthrough itself, whether you are in an exempt category, what to do about a name or date-of-birth mismatch, what each status message means, and that the provision it cites was repealed on 1 April 2026. |
| Bank linking | That your Aadhaar can be linked to an account. | That KYC linking and NPCI seeding are different things with different failure modes, and that only one of them decides whether a subsidy arrives. |
| When it fails | A helpline number. | Which of the several escalation routes is actually appropriate to your problem, and what each one is good for — which is a page of its own on this site. |
Why no page on this site asks for your Aadhaar number
A short section, because it is short.
Nothing on GetNyay accepts an Aadhaar number or a PAN. Not in a form, not in a URL, not in local storage. The tool on the linking page — which answers which of your two records to change when the names disagree — asks about the *shape* of the mismatch and never about the numbers, and it stores nothing at all.
This is worth saying out loud rather than merely doing, because pages that look like this one and do ask are one of the commonest frauds in this space. Neither UIDAI nor the Income Tax Department will ask for your Aadhaar number or PAN anywhere except on their own portals. If a page that is not one of theirs asks, close it.
More questions about this page
What is the password for the aadhar card pdf?▼
Is it mandatory to link Aadhaar with a bank account?▼
What can I change in my Aadhaar online?▼
How many times can I change my name on my adhaar card?▼
How much does an Aadhaar update cost in 2026?▼
Does updating my Aadhaar update my bank account and PAN?▼
My mobile number registered with Aadhaar is old. What can I still do?▼
Why is my subsidy not reaching my bank account even though Aadhaar is linked?▼
Is e-Aadhaar as valid as the physical Aadhaar card?▼
Official sources checked
The statutes, rules and regulator pages the statements on this page were checked against.
- Alteration of demographic information — the statutory basis for every update service named on this page.
- K. S. Puttaswamy (Retd.) v. Union of India (2018)Section 57 of the Aadhaar Act struck down; the amended Prevention of Money-laundering Rules compelling bank linking held unconstitutional; the linking of Aadhaar with PAN upheld. Cited without a link: the Supreme Court’s own search does not index it usefully and both scr.sci.gov.in and judgments.ecourts.gov.in are captcha-gated, so no official URL could be verified. A citation beats a guessed link.
- UIDAI’s published schedule and the source of every charge on this page: enrolment free, biometric update ₹125, demographic update ₹75 on its own, document update free on myAadhaar until 14 June 2027 and ₹75 at a centre, and an email-address update through the Aadhaar app free until 31 December 2026. Checked 10 September 2026.
- The lifetime limits, the Regional Office exception route and what it asks for, the published rejection reasons, and the 30-to-90-day timing. Checked 10 September 2026.
- What the app can and cannot do: address and mobile-number updates on face authentication, the three mobile-number scenarios, and UIDAI’s statement that name, gender, email and date of birth are not currently available in the app and that the photograph, fingerprints and iris can only be updated at a centre. Checked 10 September 2026.
- The e-Aadhaar password rule with all four of UIDAI’s own examples, the definition of masked Aadhaar, the Aadhaar PVC card at ₹75 and how to order one with no registered mobile, and UIDAI’s statement that all forms of Aadhaar are equally valid. Checked 10 September 2026. This page replaces UIDAI FAQ URLs that this cluster cited on first publication and that now return 404 following UIDAI’s site rebuild.
- The PAN linking requirement, the ₹1,000 fee and the inoperative-PAN machinery, all in force since 1 April 2026. The Income Tax Department’s own help page was still citing the repealed section 139AA(2A) when checked on 10 September 2026.
If you have just read a page citing section 139AA, read this first
The Income-tax Act, 2025 replaced the Income-tax Act, 1961 on 1 April 2026, and the Income-tax Rules, 2026 replaced the Income-tax Rules, 1962 on the same day. The requirement did not change. Its numbering did — and almost nothing on the open web has caught up, including, when this page was last checked, the Income Tax Department’s own help page and the PAN service provider’s own article. Nothing you were told was wrong in substance. It was cited to a provision that no longer exists.
| What you will still see cited | What is actually in force |
|---|---|
| Section 139AA(2), Income-tax Act, 1961 | Section 262(6), Income-tax Act, 2025 |
| Rule 114AAA, Income-tax Rules, 1962 | Rule 162, Income-tax Rules, 2026 |
| Section 234H with rule 114(5A) | Rule 158(10), Income-tax Rules, 2026 |
| Sections 206AA and 206CC | Section 397(2), Income-tax Act, 2025 |
| Section 272B | Section 467, Income-tax Act, 2025 |
| Forms 49A and 49AA | Forms 93, 94, 95 and 96 |
| “Request for New PAN Card Or/And Changes Or Correction in PAN Data” | Form PAN CR-01 (individuals) and PAN CR-02 (others) |
Source: the Income-tax Act, 2025 and the Income-tax Rules, 2026, the latter notified by CBDT Notification No. 22/2026, G.S.R. 198(E), dated 20 March 2026 and in force from 1 April 2026. Checked 10 September 2026.
This page has no field that accepts an Aadhaar number or a PAN, and there is no reason it would need one. Nothing you enter is stored, sent anywhere, or written to your browser — it exists only while this page is open and disappears when you close it. Neither UIDAI nor the Income Tax Department will ever ask for your Aadhaar number or PAN on a page that is not their own; if a page that looks like this one asks you for either, close it.
Every page in this guide
You are here
Working out which Aadhaar service you need
What to do next
- 1
If the file will not open, that is one line and then a long tail
First four letters of the name in capitals, spaces skipped, then the year of birth — and nine reasons that goes wrong, several of which UIDAI’s own examples settle.
The e-Aadhaar PDF password → - 2
If this is about PAN, check the status before paying anything
Most people asking are already linked, and the fee is not refunded because you turned out not to need it.
Linking Aadhaar with PAN → - 3
If a detail is wrong, find out first whether it can be changed online
Only the address can. And three fields are capped for life, which makes the order you do things in matter more here than almost anywhere else.
Updating Aadhaar → - 4
If the detail is a name, that is a separate journey
A correction and a legal change need different proof, and you get two name updates in a lifetime to spend on getting it right.
Name correction in Aadhaar → - 5
If the question is really about a State-issued certificate
Domicile, income, birth, death and legal heir certificates work on completely different machinery, with no national rule behind them.
Government certificates in India → - 6
If you want to know what your PAN itself is telling you
Two of the ten characters say something real, and one of them explains why correcting your surname will never change the number.
Reading your own PAN →