E-Way Bill Limit by State: Intrastate Thresholds Compared

The e-way bill limit is Rs 50,000 of consignment value under Rule 138 of the CGST Rules — but that single figure only tells the whole story for interstate movement. For goods moving entirely within one state, the state or union territory can notify a higher threshold of its own, and a number of them have. So the honest answer to "what is the e way bill limit in my state" is that there are two limits in play, and which one binds you depends on whether the consignment crosses a state border.

The general Rs 50,000 e-way bill limit

Rule 138 of the Central Goods and Services Tax Rules, 2017 requires a registered person who causes the movement of goods of consignment value exceeding Rs 50,000 to furnish information about that consignment in Part A of Form GST EWB-01 before the movement starts. The movement can be in relation to a supply, for a reason other than supply — a stock transfer or a return, say — or an inward supply from an unregistered person. The trigger is the movement, not the sale, which is why branch transfers and goods sent for repair fall inside the net just as ordinary sales do.

Two things about the wording matter in practice. First, the test is "exceeding" Rs 50,000, so a consignment valued at exactly Rs 50,000 does not cross the line. Second, the rule is written around the person who causes the movement, which can be the consignor, the consignee, or the transporter depending on who is arranging carriage. That determines who is on the hook for generating the document, a point covered in more detail in our broader guide to e-way bill rules and limits.

The e-way bill itself has two parts. Part A carries the invoice and goods details. Part B carries the vehicle number, and it is Part B that completes the document and starts the validity clock. Where the distance between the consignor's place of business and the transporter is under 50 km and the movement is within the same state, Part B need not be furnished for that leg — a small but frequently used relaxation.

What counts as consignment value

Getting the threshold right depends entirely on getting the value right, and this is where a lot of teams quietly go wrong. Consignment value is the value declared on the invoice, bill of supply or delivery challan for the goods being moved, determined in accordance with section 15 of the CGST Act, and it includes the central tax, state or union territory tax, integrated tax and cess charged on that document. It excludes the value of any exempt supply that appears on the same invoice where the invoice covers both taxable and exempt goods.

The practical consequence is that an invoice with a taxable value comfortably under Rs 50,000 can still cross the threshold once 18% GST is added. A consignment invoiced at Rs 43,000 plus 18% comes to Rs 50,740 and needs an e-way bill; the same goods at Rs 42,000 plus tax do not. If your despatch team is eyeballing the pre-tax line on the invoice, they will under-generate. Since the applicable rate itself changed for a great many items under the reform described in our note on the 2026 GST rate slabs, this is worth re-checking rather than assuming an old rule of thumb about which order sizes need a document still holds.

Why interstate and intrastate limits differ

The e-way bill system was rolled out in two stages: interstate movement first, then intrastate movement state by state. That sequencing left a structural difference behind. Interstate movement is squarely within the central government's remit, so the Rs 50,000 threshold in Rule 138 applies to it uniformly across the country — there is no Maharashtra interstate limit or Gujarat interstate limit, only the national one.

Intrastate movement is different. Rule 138(1) itself contemplates that the Commissioner of a state may notify that no e-way bill is required for movement within the state below a specified value, or for specified areas within the state. States have used that latitude in three broad ways:

• A higher value threshold. The state notifies that intrastate movement below a stated consignment value — higher than Rs 50,000 — does not require an e-way bill.
• Goods-specific carve-outs. The state exempts named categories of goods from the intrastate requirement, or conversely applies the requirement to named goods from a lower value.
• Area or distance relaxations. The state relaxes the requirement for movement within a municipal area, or for movement below a stated distance where the consignor and consignee are both inside the state.

Because these are state instruments, a business shipping within one state and a business shipping within another can face materially different paperwork on identical consignments. And a business doing both interstate and intrastate movement has to run two thresholds side by side in the same despatch process.

How states set their own intrastate e-way bill limit

A state changes its intrastate e-way bill limit by issuing a notification from its commercial tax, state tax or GST department, usually signed by the Commissioner of State Tax and published in the state gazette. Nothing in the central rules changes when this happens. That is the single most important thing to understand about e-way bill limits by state, and it is why we are not publishing a per-state figure table on this page.

A national table of state thresholds goes stale in a way that is difficult to detect. There is no central register that updates when a state amends its notification, no consolidated feed, and no versioning on most of the state portals that publish them. One state amending its limit invalidates one row of every such table on the internet, and nothing signals that it has happened. Tables of this kind are routinely copied from one blog to another without re-sourcing, so a figure can survive online for years after the notification behind it was superseded. If you are moving goods on the strength of a threshold, the cost of being wrong is a detention and penalty proceeding under section 129 — not a rounding error.

How to check your state's current threshold

The check is not difficult; it is just rarely done. A workable routine:

1. Identify the state. The relevant state is the one the goods move in, which is not always the state of your GSTIN. If you are unsure which state a counterparty's registration belongs to, the first two digits of the GSTIN give it away — see our GST state code list.
2. Go to that state's commercial tax or state GST department site and open its notifications or circulars section. E-way bill notifications are usually filed under state tax notifications rather than under the e-way bill portal.
3. Find the most recent notification that mentions Rule 138 or e-way bill. Read it in full rather than the summary line — the threshold is often qualified by goods category, by whether the movement is for supply, or by area.
4. Cross-check on the national portal. The e-way bill portal at ewaybillgst.gov.in and cbic-gst.gov.in carry the central rules and, in places, links to state material.
5. Record the date you checked against the threshold you have configured in your ERP or despatch checklist, and re-check on a fixed cadence — quarterly is reasonable for most businesses.

If your goods move in more than three or four states, put this in a small internal reference document with a "verified on" date per state rather than leaving it in someone's head. The failure mode here is always the same: a threshold that was correct when it was configured and that nobody has revisited since.

Movements that need an e-way bill regardless of value

The Rs 50,000 threshold is not universal even at the central level. The provisos to Rule 138(1) require an e-way bill irrespective of consignment value in two situations:

• Interstate movement of goods by a principal to a job worker, or by a registered job worker where applicable — the e-way bill must be generated by the principal irrespective of the value of the consignment.
• Interstate movement of handicraft goods by a person who has been exempted from the requirement to obtain registration — again, irrespective of value.

States may also notify their own value-independent requirements for specified goods moving within the state, which is another reason to read the state notification rather than assume the threshold is the whole rule. If you are moving low-value consignments of goods that a state treats as sensitive, the general limit may simply not be the operative test.

Movements outside the e-way bill system entirely

Separately from the value threshold, the annexure to Rule 138(14) lists movements for which no e-way bill is required at all, however valuable the consignment. These include goods transported by a non-motorised conveyance, goods moving from a port, airport, air cargo complex or land customs station to an inland container depot or container freight station for customs clearance, and goods specified as exempt from the requirement in the annexure. Alcoholic liquor for human consumption and the petroleum products outside GST's scope also sit outside the system, as does movement of goods that are not treated as a supply under Schedule III in the relevant circumstances.

The annexure is specific and worth reading once in full if your business regularly ships anything unusual. Do not extend it by analogy — "it feels like an exempt movement" is not a defence at a checkpost. Where an e-way bill is required, the next question is how long it lasts, which turns on distance rather than value; that is covered in our note on e-way bill validity and distance.

Running this in a dispatch or AP team

A few things make the difference between a threshold rule that works and one that quietly leaks:

• Test the tax-inclusive value in the system, not on the shop floor. If your ERP flags despatches needing an e-way bill, make sure the flag is computed on the invoice total including tax and net of exempt lines, not on the taxable value.
• Keep the interstate and intrastate thresholds as separate configuration. Hardcoding one Rs 50,000 constant across all movement types is the most common cause of unnecessary e-way bills on intrastate despatches in states with a higher limit — a compliance cost with no benefit.
• Do not confuse this threshold with the e-invoicing threshold. They are unrelated mechanisms with different triggers — one is per consignment, the other is based on aggregate annual turnover. See the e-invoicing threshold for that side of it.
• Check the counterparty, not just the paperwork. An e-way bill against a consignee whose registration has been cancelled or suspended creates problems downstream when you try to claim credit on the corresponding invoice. Vendor and customer GSTIN status is worth checking on a schedule, as set out in our guide to vendor GST verification for accounts payable.

Our API is verification-only — it tells you whether a GSTIN is valid and what its current registration status and jurisdiction are. It does not generate e-way bills, and we are not a GSP. The point of connecting it to this topic is narrow but real: the state code embedded in a counterparty's GSTIN tells you which state's rules govern a movement to or from them, and the registration status tells you whether the consignment is going to an active taxpayer at all.

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