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Air Quality (AQI) in India Today - Live Updates

Live Air Quality Index (AQI) for 257 cities across India, scored on the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) national air quality index. Updated 3 Sep 2026 from Government of India monitoring stations.

🕒 Last updated 3 Sep, 10:21 AM
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Air Quality (AQI) – All India

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Showing 201–257 of 257 monitored locations

0–50 Good 51–100 Satisfactory 101–200 Moderate 201–300 Poor 301–400 Very Poor 400+ Severe
⚠️ Severe: Avoid all outdoor activity. This level affects even healthy people.

The Air Quality Index (AQI) is a single 0–500 score used by India's Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) to describe how polluted the air is right now, combining PM2.5, PM10, NO₂, SO₂, CO and O₃ into one number. India's official bands run 0–50 Good, 51–100 Satisfactory, 101–200 Moderate, 201–300 Poor, 301–400 Very Poor, and 400+ Severe. Anything above 200 is generally considered unsafe for prolonged outdoor activity, especially for children, older adults, and anyone with respiratory or heart conditions.

Related data: How AQI Is Calculated

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a good AQI value?

0-50 is Good, 51-100 is Satisfactory, 101-200 is Moderate, 201-300 is Poor, 301-400 is Very Poor, and 401-500 is Severe, per India's National AQI scale. Above 200, sensitive groups should start limiting prolonged outdoor exertion.

How often does AQI data update on this page?

AQI readings refresh through the day as fresh data lands from monitoring stations across India; each city card shows when it was last updated so you can tell how current a specific reading is.

Why is AQI worse in winter than summer?

Cooler air traps pollutants closer to the ground instead of letting them rise and disperse, and winter in North India adds crop-stubble burning and Diwali fireworks on top of that, which is why October to January is consistently the worst stretch and the monsoon months are the cleanest.

What is PM2.5 and why does it matter more than other pollutants?

PM2.5 refers to particulate matter smaller than 2.5 micrometres, small enough to pass deep into the lungs and bloodstream, which is why it's the single pollutant most health guidance and AQI calculations weight most heavily.

What is AQI & Why Does It Matter?

The Air Quality Index, or AQI, turns messy pollution data into one number you can read in two seconds. Instead of tracking six different gases and dust particles separately, it rolls them into a single score from 0 to 500, where a low number means clean air and a high number means you should think twice before stepping outside. For the roughly 1.4 billion people living in India, that single number decides a lot: whether a morning jog is safe, whether a school keeps kids indoors during recess, whether someone with asthma needs an extra puff of their inhaler before leaving home. Delhi is the clearest example. Its AQI can sit near a healthy 80 during the July monsoon and cross 400 by late October, right around Diwali, when firecracker smoke stacks on top of daily traffic, construction dust and crop-stubble fires drifting in from Punjab and Haryana. Hospitals across the city report a real jump in breathing-related emergency visits every winter, timed almost exactly to those AQI spikes.

How AQI Works in India

India's AQI is set and published by the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), the government body responsible for monitoring pollution nationwide. Monitoring stations placed in cities and towns across the country measure six pollutants around the clock: PM2.5 and PM10 (fine and coarse dust particles small enough to lodge in your lungs), nitrogen dioxide, sulphur dioxide, carbon monoxide and ozone. Each pollutant gets its own sub-index score, and whichever pollutant is worst at that moment becomes the city's overall AQI for that hour, so a spike in just one of them, dust from a nearby construction site, say, is enough to push the whole reading into the red. This page pulls that station data directly from data.gov.in, the Government of India's open data portal, and refreshes it through the day rather than relying on one morning snapshot. Because stations aren't in every neighbourhood, a city's AQI is really a reading from its nearest station, and pollution can vary noticeably even within the same city depending on traffic density and distance from a busy road.

How to Read the AQI Numbers

CPCB splits AQI into six colour-coded bands, and treating them like a traffic light makes them easy to act on. 0 to 50 is Good and 51 to 100 is Satisfactory, both fine for any outdoor activity. 101 to 200 is Moderate, where sensitive groups, children, older adults, and anyone with asthma or a heart condition, should ease off on prolonged outdoor exertion. 201 to 300 is Poor, where even healthy people may start noticing shortness of breath during exercise outside. 301 to 400 is Very Poor, the point where a mask outdoors and staying in for sensitive groups both make sense. 400 and above is Severe, and at that level the advice is simple: skip outdoor activity altogether, since it affects even fit, healthy adults.

Best Times to Check AQI & Decision Making

AQI in most Indian cities tends to be worse early morning and late evening, when cooler air traps pollutants closer to the ground, and better in the early afternoon once the sun has warmed and lifted that layer. If you're planning a run, checking the number right before you leave beats trusting yesterday's memory, since AQI can shift by 50 points or more within a single day. Seasonally, October to January is the roughest stretch across North India: cooler air, Diwali fireworks and stubble burning from neighbouring states push AQI into Poor or worse for weeks at a time, while the monsoon months of July to September usually bring the cleanest air of the year as rain washes dust out of the atmosphere. A parent deciding whether to send a child out to play, or a runner picking a route, is better off checking today's actual number here than assuming the air is the same as it was last week.

Why AQI Matters: Health & Lifestyle Impact

Health impact: A 2020 Lancet study estimated that outdoor air pollution contributed to roughly 1.6 million deaths in India in a single year, and hospitals see the effect in real time: Delhi's chest and emergency departments report a genuine rise in asthma attacks and breathing complaints every winter, timed almost exactly to the season's AQI spikes. The risk isn't evenly spread: children's lungs are still developing, pregnant women and the elderly are more vulnerable, and anyone working outdoors for hours at a stretch, traffic police, delivery riders, street vendors, gets a far bigger daily dose than someone who steps out briefly. Once AQI crosses 300, even people with no history of lung trouble can start noticing a scratchy throat or shortness of breath during normal outdoor activity, and above 400, doctors advise against any outdoor exertion at all. If today's AQI on this page is above 200, skip the outdoor run and take it indoors; above 300, add a mask before stepping out and avoid the 8 to 10 AM and 6 to 8 PM traffic hours when street-level pollution peaks; above 400, keep children and elderly family members inside altogether.

Lifestyle impact: Delhi-NCR's Graded Response Action Plan (GRAP), a real government policy, kicks in stricter restrictions as AQI worsens, including construction bans, restrictions on truck entry, and at the most severe stages, school closures or a shift to online classes. Winters that push past Severe have genuinely closed schools and halted outdoor sports days in the region. Away from policy, plenty of ordinary decisions follow the same number: whether an evening walk happens today or gets pushed to early morning, whether a family buys an air purifier before Diwali instead of after, whether a housing society keeps the building gym open as the indoor alternative to the jogging track that week. Checking this page before the school run or the evening walk, rather than going by how the sky looks or how the air smells, catches spikes that aren't always obvious to the eye.

📊 AQI Trends (30-Day)

Highest3304 Aug
Lowest2753 Sep
Average297
VolatilityMedium

🟢 24h: ↓ -0.9% 🟢 7d: ↓ -6.4% 🟢 Since 4 Aug: ↓ -16.7%

Seasonal pattern: October to January is India's worst AQI stretch, cooler air, Diwali fireworks and crop-stubble burning all stack up, while July to September (monsoon) is typically the cleanest. Best time to check: right before heading out, since AQI swings most in early morning and late evening.

🏆 Cleanest & Worst Air Today (All India)

Cleanest right now

  1. Byrnihat, Assam 4 Good
  2. Rishikesh, Uttarakhand 9 Good
  3. Sasaram, Bihar 17 Good
  4. Rohtak, Haryana 18 Good
  5. Dombivli, Maharashtra 21 Good

Worst right now

  1. Ahmedabad, Gujarat 494 Severe
  2. Pimpri-Chinchwad, Maharashtra 494 Severe
  3. Thane, Maharashtra 494 Severe
  4. Brajrajnagar, Odisha 494 Severe
  5. Rupnagar, Punjab 494 Severe

Top Cities

Delhi Mumbai Bengaluru Chennai Kolkata Hyderabad Pune Ahmedabad Jaipur Lucknow
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