A dollar does not hold still. Because prices tend to rise over time, the same amount of money buys a little less each year. This inflation calculator uses the Consumer Price Index to translate a sum from one year into its equivalent purchasing power in another.
What the Consumer Price Index measures
The CPI, published monthly by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, tracks the average price of a fixed basket of goods and services that a typical urban household buys — housing, food, transportation, medical care, and more. When the index rises from one year to the next, that increase is inflation. Converting between two years is a matter of comparing their index values: divide the ending year's CPI by the starting year's, and multiply your amount by the result. To project growth rather than lost value, use the compound interest calculator.
Why purchasing power matters
Inflation quietly erodes savings and fixed incomes. A salary that felt comfortable in 1995 would need to be roughly twice as large in 2026 just to buy the same lifestyle. Understanding this helps you evaluate old prices, set retirement targets, and judge whether a raise actually keeps pace with the cost of living rather than merely looking bigger on paper.
Reading the results
The calculator reports the equivalent value, the total inflation over the period, and the average annual rate that compounds to that total. The annual figure is usually a modest single-digit number, but small percentages stack up: a steady 2.4% a year roughly doubles prices over three decades. Historical CPI values are fixed, so past conversions are exact, while any future year is an estimate based on projected inflation.
More worked examples
What $100 from 1980 is worth today: the CPI-U annual average was 82.4 in 1980 and 321.943 in 2025. Enter $100, 1980 and 2025, and the result is $390.71. Prices rose 290.7% over that period, an average of 3.07% a year.
Comparing a salary: a $50,000 salary in 2000 needed to be $93,479.38 in 2025 to buy the same basket of goods, based on CPI-U values of 172.2 and 321.943. Prices rose 87% in total, or 2.53% a year on average.
Going backward: set the ending year earlier than the starting year to see what today's money would have been worth in the past. $20 in 2025 corresponds to $2.41 in 1970, when the CPI-U averaged 38.8.
When to use this calculator
Use it to put an old price, wage, or savings balance into today's dollars, to check whether a raise kept pace with prices, or to compare historical figures in a report on equal terms. Because it uses annual averages, it answers year-to-year questions; it does not show month-to-month changes.
Common mistakes
Treating the national CPI-U as your personal inflation rate is the biggest one: your own costs depend on where you live and what you buy. Another is mixing up the direction of the comparison; check that the starting year is the year the original amount comes from. Results for the current year rely on the partial-year CPI estimate described above, so they can move when the full-year average is published.
Reading the result panel
Alongside the adjusted amount, the panel lists total inflation between the two years, the cumulative price change in dollars, the average annual inflation rate, and the CPI-U values used for each year. Figures marked as estimates use the partial-year CPI described above.