Bond Price Calculator

A bond's price is the present value of everything it will pay you: every coupon payment between now and maturity, plus the face value returned at maturity, all discounted at the yield to maturity the market is demanding. When yields rise, bond prices fall, and vice versa, because the same fixed coupon payments are worth less discounted at a higher rate.

This calculator is the inverse of this site's Yield to Maturity Calculator, which solves price → yield. This one solves yield → price: given a yield you want (or the market's current yield for similar bonds), what should the bond be worth?

How does this calculator work?

Enter the bond's face value, its stated coupon rate, the yield to maturity you want to price it at, the years remaining to maturity, and how often coupons are paid.

The calculator discounts every future coupon payment and the face value back to today at the given yield, and sums them to get the bond's price.

Because a bond is just a bundle of future payments, its price is the combined present value of the coupon stream plus the face value returned at maturity, discounted at the yield the market demands. That framing is also why a lower-coupon but tax-free bond can still win once taxes are counted, the comparison the municipal bond calculator is built for, and why a bond and a bank CD of the same term can be judged on the same discounted basis.

Worked example

A $1,000 face value bond with a 5% coupon, 10 years to maturity, semiannual coupons, priced at a 6% yield to maturity.

Face value

$1,000

Coupon rate

5% ($25 every 6 months)

Yield to maturity

6%

Bond price

$925.61

Trades at a

discount to face value

How the numbers work

Because the bond's 5% coupon rate is below the 6% yield the market demands, the bond has to sell at a discount ($925.61, below its $1,000 face value) so that a buyer's total return (coupons plus price appreciation back to face value at maturity) works out to 6%.

If the coupon rate instead matched the yield exactly (5% coupon, 5% yield), the bond would price at exactly its $1,000 face value: a "par" bond, since the coupons alone already deliver the required return.

Bond prices and yields move in opposite directions by construction. Rising rates push existing bond prices down (since new bonds now offer more attractive yields), and falling rates push existing bond prices up.