Token Vesting Calculator

When your tokens unlock and how many. Take 1,00,000 tokens from 1 January 2026 with 10% unlocked at the start, a 12-month cliff and 36 months of vesting, released monthly. 10,000 unlock at the start; nothing more until 1 January 2027, when the cliff releases 30,000 at once; then 2,500 a month until everything has vested on 1 January 2029. At ₹50 a token, the cliff unlock is worth ₹15,00,000.

The TGE (token generation event) unlock is the share released when the token launches or the grant starts. A cliff is a waiting period with no further releases, often 6 or 12 months, to keep teams and early investors committed; when it ends, everything that has vested by then unlocks at once. After the cliff, tokens usually unlock monthly, quarterly or continuously until the vesting period ends.

This calculator counts it from the start, which is the usual meaning of “a 12-month cliff and 36-month vesting”: the cliff unlocks a third of the rest and the last tokens arrive 36 months after the start. Some schedules vest over the period after the cliff instead: to model a 12-month cliff followed by 36 months of vesting, enter 48 months and a 12-month cliff, then check the first release against your agreement.

Because unlocked tokens can be sold. A large unlock for a team or early investors, compared with the tokens already circulating, can push the price down as some of them sell. Enter the circulating supply to see each unlock as a share of it; unlocks above a few percent of supply are usually watched closely by the market.

It depends on how you got them. Tokens received as pay from an employer are usually taxed as salary at your slab rate on their value when you receive them, and a later gain on selling them is taxed at 30% plus cess under section 115BBH. Tokens bought in a private sale have a cost of what you paid, and only the gain on selling is taxed, at 30%. A contractor paid in tokens has business income. Rules for vesting and lock-ups are not settled, so check with a tax professional.

Usually not: locked tokens are held in a vesting contract or by the project, and selling a promise of future tokens may break your agreement. Some platforms trade locked positions, but at a discount, with the risk that the project changes the schedule. Plan around the dates in the table, and remember the price on the day tokens unlock may be very different from today’s.