CPCB Monitoring Stations India — Station-Level AQI by City

Distinct stations reporting daily AQI each calendar year. The step-up around 2018–19 tracks the rollout of India's National Clean Air Programme (NCAP) and the expansion of Continuous Ambient Air Quality Monitoring (CAAQM) stations.

Widest intra-city gaps · top 10

Cities where the gap between the cleanest and dirtiest CPCB station is largest. Single-station cities are excluded (no gap to measure). Where a dirtiest station maps to a known neighbourhood, follow theLive AQI →badge to see current conditions.

Most uniform cities · top 10 tightest gaps

Cities where the city-wide average AQI is a good proxy for every neighbourhood — the spread between the cleanest and dirtiest CPCB station is small. Compare to the widest-gap leaderboard above: in these cities, you can mostly trust a single headline AQI.

Chronically worst stations · top 20

Individual CPCB stations with the highest long-run average AQI in the country. Stations with fewer than 180 days of readings are excluded to avoid short-window outliers.

About this data

• Source: CPCB station-level daily AQI readings, 2016–2024 (605,654 records across 551 stations in 214 cities). Agencies include CPCB, DPCC, IMD and IITM; we treat them as a single network of monitoring stations.
• Methodology:Each station's long-run average is the unweighted mean of its daily AQI across the entire CPCB window. The city gap is maxStationAvg − minStationAvg. Single-station cities are excluded from the widest/tightest rankings.
• Chronic-worst filter: Stations need ≥ 180 days of readings to appear on the national leaderboard. This avoids short-lived monitors that briefly record high values and skew the ranking.
• Data guard: AQI readings are capped at the NAQI ceiling of 500. Values above that (occasional sensor faults) are treated as 500.
• Locality cross-links:Where a station's name prefix matches a known neighbourhood in our live-AQI database, we surface a “Live AQI →” badge. Coverage is limited to 15 cities and 92 neighbourhoods; we do not fabricate links.