Sustainability of maize production systems is threatened by poor economic returns and resource intensiveness. Therefore, an experiment was conducted at the ICAR-Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi during 2016-17 to 2017-18 to assess the effect of tillage and microbial inoculantsintegrated phosphorus (P) management on productivity, quality, economic outcome and energy dynamics of maize. Three tillage practices viz., CT-R (conventional tillage with no residue), ZT-R (zero tillage with no residue) and ZT + R (zero tillage with wheat crop residue at 2.5Mg/ha) were assigned in main plots and five P management practices viz., P1 (control-NK as per recommendation, but no P), P2 (17.2 kg P/ha), P3 (17.2 kg P/ha + PSB), P4 (17.2 kg P/ha + compost inoculants) and P5 (34.4 kg P/ha) were allocated in subplots in three times replicated split-plot design. The maximum grain yield (5.96Mg/ha), protein content (9.13%), protein yield (546 kg/ha) and gross energy returns (209 x 10(3) MJ/ha) were recorded under ZT + R while higher benefit: cost ratio (B: C ratio - the amount of economic gain per unit investment) (1.53) and energy efficiency (12.5) was noticed under ZT-R. Among the P management practices, the application of 34.4 kg P/ha recorded the highest grain yield (6.45Mg/ha), protein content (9.34%), protein yield (603 kg/ha), B: C ratio (1.65) and energy efficiency (10.1). The results suggested that the application of P at the rate of 34.4 kg/ha under ZT + R is an economically robust approach for the quality maize production in semi-arid region.