HSN Code List 2026: GST Rates for Every Common Indian Shop Product

Ramesh runs a hardware and paint shop in Indore. Fifteen years in the trade, GST registered since 2019, and by his own admission he had never once looked up an HSN code — he copied them from supplier bills. In early 2026 a routine assessment pulled eighteen months of his invoices. He had been billing a range of wall paints under a code that carried the old 12% rate. After GST 2.0, that line of products sat at 18%. The gap, spread across hundreds of invoices, came to roughly ₹1.6 lakh in short-paid tax, plus interest. His accountant charged ₹14,000 to reconstruct the records and file the correction.

Illustrative composite of real Accountune customers. Names and details changed.

Ramesh did nothing dishonest. He simply used the wrong code for a product he had sold for years. This is one of the most common and most avoidable GST problems for Indian shopkeepers — and it starts with not knowing the correct HSN code. Accountune is a cloud-based GST billing and accounting software built in Jaipur since 2017, used by 12,000+ Indian small businesses, and it ships with a 10,000+ HSN database so the right code and rate load on every invoice automatically. This guide lists the current codes and rates for what Indian shops actually sell.

What is the HSN code list for 2026, and how do you find the right code?

Quick answer: An HSN code is the 4-to-8-digit product classification number that decides the GST rate on every invoice you raise. Under GST 2.0 (from 22 September 2025), each code maps to one of four slabs — 0%, 5%, 18%, or 40%. The practical way for a small shop to apply the correct code is billing software such as Accountune, which auto-fills the HSN and rate from a built-in database so you set each product once and never guess again.

HSN code list 2026 with GST rates, by shop type

Most shopkeepers do not think in HSN chapters. They think in what sits on their shelves. So the HSN code list below is grouped the way a shop actually works, and the shop types are ordered by how often Indian searchers look them up.

Every rate here is the GST 2.0 rate in force from 22 September 2025. Codes are given at 4-digit level, which is what a business with turnover up to ₹5 crore must show on a B2B invoice. If your turnover crosses ₹5 crore you need the 6-digit code, and section 4 explains how to extend a 4-digit code correctly.

How to use this table: find your product, note the 4-digit code, then save it against that product once in your billing software. Accountune ships a pre-loaded database of 10,000+ HSN and SAC codes, suggests the code when you add a product, and then applies the same code and rate to every future invoice on its own. That is the difference between looking a code up once and looking it up at every sale.

Hardware and building material

Two hardware items behave differently from everything else on this list. Marble is 2515 when it leaves the quarry as a block and 6802 once it is cut and polished into a slab, and the two codes do not carry the same treatment, so a dealer who bills polished slabs under the block code is using the wrong code. Bricks sit outside the ordinary slab structure under a separate scheme, so a brick trader should confirm the current position before setting the rate rather than assuming a standard slab.

For a fuller breakdown of paint codes by type and finish, see the paint HSN code guide, and for cement and construction material see the cement and construction HSN guide.

Kirana, grocery and provision store

The branded-versus-unbranded split is the single most common rate error in a kirana store, and section 7 covers exactly where the line falls. For the full 50-product FMCG breakdown, see the FMCG and kirana GST rate list.

Medical store and pharmacy

Medicines carried the 12% slab before GST 2.0 and most moved to 5%, which means a medical store still billing from a pre-September-2025 product master is overcharging its own customers and filing returns that will not reconcile. A batch-and-expiry-aware product master is the practical fix, and the medicine GST rate list carries the item-level detail.

Electronics and mobile shop

The trap in this category is billing every accessory under 8517 because the phone is 8517. A charger is 8504, an earbud is 8518, a power bank is 8507, and a cover changes code with its material. Getting this wrong on a high-volume counter compounds fast. The mobile accessories HSN code guide works through each accessory and the material trap on covers.

Garment and footwear

This category has a rule no other category has, and section 6 covers it in full. For garment-specific codes see the readymade garments HSN guide and for sarees the saree HSN code guide.

Jewellery

Jewellery is the one retail category GST 2.0 left alone. Gold stays at a special 3% and making charges are billed separately at 5%, which is why a jewellery invoice normally carries two lines rather than one. The jewellery HSN code guide covers old-gold exchange and karigar charges.

Stationery, fancy and general store

Wholesale and distribution

A wholesaler bills the same HSN codes as the retailer for the same goods, so use the shop-type table that matches the goods being moved. What changes for a wholesaler is not the code but the reporting obligation: turnover above ₹5 crore means 6-digit HSN on every invoice rather than 4-digit on B2B invoices only. The rate-difference and price-difference question in section 5 also lands almost entirely on wholesalers and distributors.

HSN codes grouped by GST slab

Sometimes the question runs the other way. Instead of asking what rate a product carries, a shopkeeper checking a return or a rate revision wants to know which of their products sit in a given slab. Grouped by slab, GST 2.0 looks like this.

0% (nil-rated) Fresh fruit and vegetables, loose unbranded grains and pulses, fresh milk, curd and lassi, bread, salt, printed books, maps and charts, sanitary napkins, and specified lifesaving drugs. Nil-rated is not the same as non-GST. These goods still have HSN codes and those codes still belong on the invoice.

5% Packaged and branded food, sugar, tea, coffee, edible oils, spices, biscuits and namkeen, soap, shampoo and toothpaste, most medicines and medical devices, apparel and footwear up to ₹2,500 per piece, pencils, festive articles, and making charges on jewellery. This slab absorbed most of what used to be 12%.

18% The default slab for manufactured goods. Cement and building material, paint, hardware and tools, electrical goods, mobile phones and accessories, consumer electronics and white goods, plastic and steel household articles, stationery, imitation jewellery, and apparel or footwear above ₹2,500 per piece. Most of the retired 28% slab landed here.

40% Aerated and sugary drinks, tobacco and tobacco products, luxury cars, motorcycles above 350cc, and casino and online-gaming services. This is the sin and luxury category, and it exists mainly to replace the old 28%-plus-cess structure.

3% and 0.25%, outside the four slabs Gold, silver and precious-metal jewellery run at a special 3% under Chapter 71, and unworked diamonds at 0.25%. GST 2.0 did not change either. Any list that shows only four slabs is incomplete for a jeweller.

If your product master still carries a 12% or 28% line, that line is wrong, because neither slab exists any more. Accountune keeps the rate master current for GST 2.0 across every device, so a rate revision does not become a manual re-entry job across hundreds of products.

What changed in the HSN and GST rate list after GST 2.0

The codes did not change on 22 September 2025. The rates attached to them did, and that distinction matters, because a shop that copied HSN codes correctly two years ago can still be billing at the wrong rate today.

Two consequences follow, and both show up in assessment notices rather than in day-to-day billing.

The first is short payment. If a product moved from 12% to 5% and you kept billing 12%, you collected more tax than due and your customer paid it. If a product moved from 12% to 18% and you kept billing 12%, you short-paid, and that gap plus interest is recoverable from you. Ramesh's ₹1.6 lakh was exactly this.

The second is broken input tax credit for your buyer. A B2B invoice carrying a stale rate does not reconcile against GSTR-2B, so your buyer's credit is held up and the query comes back to you. On a wholesale ledger this becomes a collections problem, not just a compliance one.

The practical guard is a product master that carries the current rate against every HSN code, rather than a rate typed at the counter. Accountune applies the linked GST rate and the correct CGST-SGST or IGST split from the product master automatically, based on the customer's state, which removes the manual step where rate errors begin. Pricing starts at ₹0 on the Free plan and from ₹799 per year on paid plans, with a 4-day free trial and no credit card.

HSN code structure: 2, 4, 6 and 8 digits, and which one you must show

An HSN code is not one number. It is a nested classification, and each pair of digits narrows the description. Understanding the nesting is what lets you extend a 4-digit code to 6 or 8 digits without guessing.

The first six digits are uniform worldwide because they come from the World Customs Organization. Only the last two are added by India. This is why a 6-digit code found on an international source is usually reliable, while an 8-digit code is not, and must come from an Indian tariff source.

Which length must appear on your invoice

This is set by CBIC Notification 78/2020 dated 15 October 2020, and it is measured on the previous year's aggregate turnover, not on the current year's running total.

Two failure modes follow from getting the length wrong rather than the code wrong. An invoice carrying fewer digits than your turnover band requires is treated as defective. And for a business inside the e-invoicing threshold, an incomplete or invalid HSN can cause the IRN to be rejected outright, which leaves the invoice legally invalid until it is corrected and re-reported. The e-invoicing rules guide covers where that threshold now sits.

The turnover band is also the thing most likely to change under you. A business that crossed ₹5 crore last year must switch from 4-digit to 6-digit reporting this year, and nothing on the GST portal reminds it to. Setting the full 6-digit code against every product from the start removes the switch entirely, because a 6-digit master satisfies both bands.

What HSN code applies to a rate difference or price difference

This question comes up almost entirely on wholesale and distribution ledgers, and it is asked as though there is a special code for it. There is not, and that is the answer.

Quick answer: A rate difference or price difference is not a separate supply, so it does not get its own HSN code. The credit note or debit note carries the same HSN code and the same GST rate as the goods in the original invoice it corrects.

The reasoning is straightforward once the document is named correctly. Under Section 34 of the CGST Act, a credit note or debit note is an adjustment to an existing supply, not a new one. It must reference the original invoice. So the classification travels with the underlying goods. If you supplied cement under 2523 at 18% and later issue a rate-difference credit note, that credit note is 2523 at 18%. It does not become a service, and it does not go under a residual services code.

This is where the common error happens. A rate difference billed under a generic services code breaks the link to the original supply, and it also breaks your buyer's input tax credit reversal, because the reversal has to match the goods it relates to.

The condition most people miss

Issuing the credit note correctly is only half of it. A post-supply discount reduces your taxable value only if the conditions in Section 15(3)(b) are met:

1. The discount was agreed at or before the time of supply, not decided afterwards

2. It is specifically linked to the relevant invoices

3. The recipient has reversed the input tax credit attributable to the discount

If a rate difference is agreed after the supply with nothing in writing beforehand, the discount is commercially real but the tax on the original value stays payable. Many distributors treat every rate difference as automatically deductible, and that assumption is what surfaces in reconciliation.

For the 6-digit question specifically, the same rule applies. The credit note carries whatever digit length the original invoice carried, matched to your turnover band under section 4.

Because the note has to mirror the original invoice, the software matters more here than in ordinary billing. Accountune links a credit or debit note to the original invoice and carries the HSN code, rate and tax split across automatically, so the adjustment reconciles instead of becoming an unmatched line in GSTR-2B. Over 12,000 Indian businesses, including wholesalers and distributors, run their billing and adjustments this way.

This section covers a technical classification point. Confirm the current position with your CA or the CBIC circulars before applying it to a large historical correction.

Apparel and footwear: the ₹2,500 rule that no other category has

Garments and footwear are the only common retail categories where the GST rate depends on the price of the item rather than on what the item is. Two shirts with the same HSN code can carry different rates.

This threshold comes from Notification 9/2025-CT(R). Three details decide whether a shop applies it correctly.

It is per piece, not per invoice. Four shirts at ₹900 each on one bill of ₹3,600 are four items at 5%, not one bill at 18%. The threshold never aggregates across the invoice.

It is measured on sale value, not MRP. If an item is tagged ₹2,800 and sold at ₹2,400 after discount, the applicable rate follows the ₹2,400. This is where most disputes start, because the tag and the transaction disagree.

A set is judged by how it is sold. A two-piece set billed as one item is one item against the threshold. The same two pieces billed on separate lines are two items. How the invoice is written decides the outcome, which is precisely why it should not be decided at the counter under pressure.

For a garment or footwear shop, the practical consequence is that the rate cannot live in the product master alone. It has to be evaluated against the transaction price at billing time. Accountune applies the threshold at the point of billing rather than fixing one rate per product, so a discounted sale does not silently carry the wrong rate. Shops running this are on the garment store billing software and footwear billing software setups.

Branded versus unbranded: the rule that changes the rate without changing the code

For staples, the HSN code stays the same and the rate moves depending on how the goods are sold. Loose rice from an open sack and the same rice in a printed 5 kg bag are both 1006. One is nil-rated and the other is 5%.

The trigger is pre-packaging and labelling, not whether a brand is famous. A shop's own printed bag with a weight declaration can be enough. Grains, pulses, flour, and several other staples all follow this pattern.

This is the most common single rate error in a kirana or grocery store, and it happens for a structural reason: the same product is genuinely sold both ways from the same shelf on the same day. A product master with one rate per product cannot express that, so the shop either overcharges on loose sales or short-pays on packed ones.

The fix is to treat loose and packed as two separate items in the product master, each with its own rate against the same HSN code. That takes ten minutes once. Kirana and grocery shops running this are on the kirana store billing software and grocery store billing software setups, and the FMCG and kirana rate list works through it product by product.

How to find the HSN code for a product you sell

There are three reliable routes and one common route that is not reliable.

The unreliable one first. Copying the code from your supplier's invoice is what most shops do, and it is how Ramesh lost ₹1.6 lakh. Your supplier may be classifying the product differently from you, may be selling a variant, or may simply be wrong. Their code is a starting hint, never a source.

Route 1: search by product name. The free Accountune HSN Code Finder returns the code and the current 2026 GST rate for any product by name, with no signup, and those codes carry straight into Accountune billing. This is the fastest route when you know the product but not the code.

Route 2: the official portal. The GST portal at gst.gov.in carries a Search HSN function under Services, User Services, Search HSN. It works before login as well as after, and it returns both the technical tariff description and the trade descriptions commonly used. Use this when a classification is contested or when you need the authoritative wording rather than just the number.

Route 3: work down the chapter. When a product genuinely does not match any obvious entry, start from the 2-digit chapter that covers its material or function, then narrow to the heading and subheading using section 4's nesting. This is slower but it is the only route that works for unusual items, and it produces a defensible answer because you can show the reasoning.

Then save it once

Whichever route you use, the code is worth looking up exactly once per product. Save it against the product in your billing software and the code and rate apply to every future invoice on their own. Accountune suggests the code from its 10,000+ HSN and SAC database when you add a product, then applies it automatically thereafter, which is what turns HSN from a daily decision into a one-time setup.

For products where two codes look defensible, keep a one-line note of why you chose the one you did. If a classification is ever questioned, a documented reason is treated very differently from a guess.

What happens if you use the wrong HSN code

The consequences arrive late, which is why this rarely feels urgent until it is. Four separate things go wrong, and they compound.

The rate goes wrong, and so does the tax. A wrong code carries a wrong rate. Short-paid tax is recoverable from you with interest, regardless of intent, and it is recoverable across the whole period the wrong code was in use rather than from the date it was noticed. Over-collected tax is a different problem: you charged your customer more than due, and refunding it after the fact is rarely practical.

Your buyer's input tax credit breaks. A B2B invoice with a wrong code or rate will not reconcile against your buyer's GSTR-2B. Their credit is held, and the query comes back to you. On a wholesale ledger this turns into a collections issue, because buyers withhold payment against unmatched credit.

The invoice can be treated as defective. An invoice showing fewer HSN digits than your turnover band requires is defective on its face. For a business inside the e-invoicing threshold, an invalid or incomplete HSN can cause the IRN to be rejected, and an invoice without a valid IRN is not a legal invoice until it is corrected and re-reported.

Corrections cost more than the tax. Ramesh's short payment was roughly ₹1.6 lakh across eighteen months. His accountant charged ₹14,000 to reconstruct the records and file the correction, and that is before interest. Reconstructing eighteen months of invoices is the expensive part, not paying the difference.

None of this requires bad intent. It requires one code entered wrong once and then repeated automatically at every sale, which is exactly what a product master does when the master itself is wrong. The same mechanism that spreads the error is the one that prevents it: set the code correctly once, and it is correct on every invoice after that. The GST invoice rules guide covers what else a compliant invoice must carry alongside the HSN.

Go deeper by shop type

This page is the master list. For the categories where classification gets genuinely difficult, there is a dedicated guide that works through the edge cases rather than just listing codes.

Mobile shops run into the most classification traps of any retail category, because a phone is 8517 but a charger is 8504, an earbud is 8518 and a cover changes code with its material. The mobile accessories HSN code guide works through each accessory and covers the bundled sale of a phone with a charger.

Jewellers deal with a rate structure no other retailer has, with gold at a special 3% and making charges billed separately. The jewellery HSN code guide covers old-gold exchange, karigar charges and hallmarking.

Hardware and paint dealers face codes that shift with the medium and the finish, and the marble block-versus-slab distinction catches out experienced traders. The paint HSN code guide and the cement and construction HSN guide cover both.

Paints, varnishes and related coatings sit in Chapter 32 and are one of the categories where shopkeepers most often pick the wrong code, because primer, enamel, distemper and wall putty do not all fall in the same heading. If you sell any of these, our paint HSN code list with GST rates breaks the chapter down item by item.

Garment retailers have the ₹2,500 threshold to apply at billing time rather than in the product master. The readymade garments HSN guide and the saree HSN code guide cover the fabric-based code differences that decide which entry applies.

Medical stores had the largest rate movement of any category under GST 2.0, with most medicines shifting down from 12% to 5%. The medicine GST rate list carries the item-level detail alongside batch and expiry handling.

For the rate changes across every category rather than HSN codes specifically, the new GST rates 2026 guide covers what moved and where.

Get every HSN code right on the first bill

Looking up codes one by one is a chore no shopkeeper should repeat at every sale. Set each product's HSN once, and the right code and GST rate apply to every invoice after that. The free Accountune HSN Code Finder is a good place to check any product now, and Accountune's billing software keeps those codes applied automatically — cloud-based, updated for GST 2.0, from ₹799 per year with a 4-day free trial and no credit card. Try it with your ten most-sold items and see how much counter guesswork disappears.