UPSC Prelims cut-offs year by year, from UPSC's own figures
The General Prelims cut-off was 116.00 out of 200 in 2016, fell to 75.41 in 2023, and was 92.66 in 2025. Every figure here, for every category, is copied from UPSC's own cut-off notice for that year, not from a coaching table.
Keshav Melnad
Exam guide4 min read
Search for the UPSC Prelims cut-off and you will find many tables. Look closely and they do not always agree. For 2023, one table gives the ST cut-off as 47.82 and another as 57.63. For the 2020 EWS cut-off, one gives 77.55 and another 90.27.
The answer is in UPSC's own notice. After each year's final result, UPSC publishes the "minimum qualifying marks" for every category at every stage. This post copies the Prelims figures from those notices for the ten years from 2016 to 2025, exactly as UPSC printed them.
What the cut-off is
The Prelims cut-off is the lowest GS Paper I score among the candidates UPSC called to Mains, in each category. UPSC's notice says it plainly: the cut-off is "on the basis of GS Paper-I only". GS Paper II (CSAT) only has to be cleared at 33%.
Two things follow from this. The cut-off is out of 200. And it is known only after the final result, months after the Prelims result itself. Our post on the Prelims pattern explains how the two papers work together.
The General cut-off, 2016 to 2025
Out of 200, from UPSC's notice for each year:
2016: 116.00
2017: 105.34
2018: 98.00
2019: 98.00
2020: 92.51
2021: 87.54
2022: 88.22
2023: 75.41
2024: 87.98
2025: 92.66
Prelims cut-offs by category, 2016–2025, from UPSC's minimum qualifying marks notices.
The cut-off fell for most of these years, to its lowest of 75.41 in 2023, and then rose again in 2024 and 2025. The difference between the highest and the lowest year is more than 40 marks: more than 20 right answers.
Keshav Melnad
Prepared for the UPSC Civil Services Examination for six years before building CollectorX on his own. He holds a PhD from IIT Bombay, and his research on Sanskrit astronomical texts is published in peer-reviewed journals.
Out of 200, in UPSC's order. EWS appears from 2019. UPSC's notices called the disability categories PH-1 to PH-3 in 2016 and 2017, and PwBD-1 to PwBD-5 from 2018.
Prelims cut-off for every category, every year, from UPSC's minimum qualifying marks notices.
The 2019 notice adds that its cut-off marks "are subject to changes" from court orders pending at the time.
What a cut-off means in answers
In GS Paper I, a right answer gets 2 marks and a wrong one loses 0.67. So the same score can come from many mixes of right and wrong answers.
Take the 2018 cut-off of 98.00. That could be 52 right and 9 wrong (104 − 6), or 55 right and 18 wrong (110 − 12), or 49 right and nothing wrong. All three score exactly 98.00. The third aspirant attempted 24 fewer questions than the second.
This is why the cut-off on its own is not a target. What matters is how many marks your attempts bring in, and that depends on your accuracy. Our post on how many questions to attempt shows how to find your own number from your mocks.
Why some cut-offs have odd decimals
Every mark in GS Paper I is a multiple of one-third: +2 for a right answer and −0.67 (two-thirds) for a wrong one. So every score is a multiple of one-third, which UPSC prints ending in .00, .34 or .66, as in 105.34 or 92.66. The cut-offs for 2016 to 2019 and 2025 all end this way.
The cut-offs for 2020 to 2024 do not: 92.51, 87.54, 88.22, 75.41, 87.98. These are also the five years in which UPSC dropped questions from its final answer key: 2 questions in 2020, 1 each in 2021, 2022 and 2023, and 3 in 2024. In 2016 to 2019 and in 2025, it dropped none. The cut-off notices do not explain how dropped questions change the marks, so we do not guess. But if you see a cut-off like 92.51, a dropped question is the likely reason it is not a multiple of one-third.
Mains and final cut-offs, General
The same notice gives the cut-off for the later stages. For the General category, from UPSC's notices:
General category Mains and final cut-offs, 2016–2025, from UPSC's minimum qualifying marks notices.
The Mains figure is out of 1,750 and the final figure out of 2,025, Mains and interview together. Prelims marks are not part of either.
How to use these numbers
Don't aim for last year's cut-off. It has moved by up to 12.81 marks from one year to the next (from 88.22 in 2022 to 75.41 in 2023).
Leave a margin. If your mock scores sit near the cut-off, a hard paper can put you below it.
Read the cut-off as a range, not a line. Over ten years, the General cut-off has been between 75.41 and 116.00.
Check UPSC's notice yourself. When a new cut-off comes out, UPSC's minimum qualifying marks notice is the only source that is always right.
Where these numbers come from
Every figure in this post is from UPSC's "minimum qualifying marks" notice for that year, published on upsc.gov.in. CollectorX keeps a copy of each notice, so these numbers are checked against the original. The question counts on dropped questions come from UPSC's final answer keys, which the CollectorX question bank uses for every PYQ.
UPSC Prelims pattern explained (CollectorX) — Prelims marks are counted on GS Paper I only; Paper II is qualifying at 33%; final merit is Mains (1,750) plus Personality Test (275). (accessed 7 November 2026)
