Certain aspects of the present disclosure provide techniques for paging based on a paging early indication (PEI). Particular aspects provide for a method for wireless communication performed by a user equipment (UE). The method generally includes determining a set of paging cycles for receiving paging information from a base station (BS), receiving a first paging early indicator (PEI) from the BS in a first paging cycle of the set of paging cycles, wherein the first PEI indicates whether the paging information will be transmitted to the UE in one or more second paging cycles of the set of paging cycles occurring after the first paging cycle, and receiving the paging information in the one or more second paging cycles based on the first PEI received in the first paging cycle.