Inflation Calculator

A dollar today doesn't buy what it used to, and it won't buy what it does today either, in the future. This calculator converts an amount of money from one year into its equivalent buying power in another year, using the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics' Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U), the standard government measure of inflation, with annual data back to 1913.

Use it to see what a past salary, price, or savings goal is really worth in today's dollars, or to translate a modern figure back into what it would have looked like decades ago.

How does this calculator work?

Enter a dollar amount, the year it's from, and the year you want to convert it to. Either year can come first, so you can convert forward (past dollars into today's terms) or backward (today's dollars into a historical equivalent).

The calculator looks up the CPI-U annual average index value published for each of the two years, then scales your amount by the ratio between them: adjusted amount = amount × (index for the "to" year ÷ index for the "from" year). Because the index simply tracks the average price level, this ratio is exactly how much more (or less) a fixed basket of goods cost in one year versus the other.

It separately reports the total percentage change in prices over the full span (the same index ratio, expressed as a percent) and an average annual inflation rate, calculated as a geometric average: (index ratio)^(1 ÷ number of years) − 1. The geometric average is what compounds smoothly to the right total over the number of years involved, unlike a simple average of yearly rates.

The CPI-U data itself comes straight from the BLS's official CPI homepage, the same primary source behind virtually every inflation calculator online. For more on what purchasing power means and how to protect it, see Empower's explainer.

Worked example

$100 in 1990, converted to 2025 dollars.

1990 CPI-U

130.7

2025 CPI-U

321.943

Equivalent in 2025

$246.32

Total inflation

146.3%

Average annual rate

2.61%

How the numbers work

The CPI-U index more than doubled from 130.7 to 321.943 over those 35 years, so $100 in 1990 needs to grow to $246.32 in 2025 to buy the same basket of goods and services.

That works out to prices rising 146.3% in total, or an average of about 2.61% a year, close to the Federal Reserve's long-run 2% inflation target, though any single year can run well above or below that average.

Inflation compounds the same way investment returns do, which is why seemingly modest annual rates (2-3%) add up to dramatic differences over a few decades. This is exactly why retirement and long-term savings plans need to account for inflation explicitly, not just nominal growth.