Inflation Calculator

The Consumer Price Index is not a price

The CPI is a position on a continuous scale with an arbitrary base — the 1982-84 average was set to 100. The 2025 annual average of 321.943 does not mean anything on its own. What means something is the ratio between two years.

1995 stood at 152.4 and 2025 at 321.943, so prices roughly doubled: 321.943 ÷ 152.4 = 2.113. A 1995 dollar bought what $2.11 buys in 2025. Every historical comparison on this page is that one division.

Future cost and purchasing power are reciprocals

Two questions look the same and give different answers. "What will this cost in twenty years?" multiplies by the inflation factor. "What will my money still buy in twenty years?" divides by it.

At 2.5% over twenty years the factor is 1.639. A $50,000 lifestyle costs $81,931 by then; $50,000 held in cash buys what $30,514 buys today. Both are true and neither is the other, which is why the calculator reports both rather than picking one.

Where the data comes from

Series CUUR0000SA0 — the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers, U.S. city average, all items, not seasonally adjusted — retrieved from the Bureau of Labor Statistics public data service. Annual averages from 1913 through 2025, which is the last complete year.

2026 has monthly data but no annual average until the year ends, so it is held separately as a partial figure and the calculator says so on the face of any result that uses it. An average of six months is not an annual average, and presenting it as one would be a small dishonesty of exactly the kind this site exists to avoid.

What the index does and does not measure

It measures a national average urban basket. Your inflation rate is not the national one, and the gaps are large. Rent, childcare, healthcare, and higher education have run persistently above the average for decades. Consumer electronics, clothing, and some services have run below it, in several cases falling outright.

A household that rents in a tight market and pays for childcare experiences inflation well above the headline figure. A household that owns outright and buys few services experiences much less. Neither is a flaw in the index; it is what an average is.

Comparisons across very long periods carry an additional caveat. The basket has changed, methods have changed, and there is no meaningful 1913 counterpart for most of what a household spends money on today. A hundred-year comparison is an illustration rather than a measurement.

A worked example

$1,000 in 1995 against 2025. The index moved from 152.4 to 321.943, a ratio of 2.113, so $1,000 then is $2,112.49 now. Cumulative inflation is 111.2%, and the annualised rate over those thirty years is 2.52%.

Run it forward instead: $1,000 at 2.5% for thirty years costs $2,097.57 to replace, and $1,000 held in cash buys $476.74 worth of today's goods. The near-agreement between the historical annualised rate and the 2.5% assumption is a coincidence of the period chosen — try 1970 to 2000 and the annualised figure is above 5%.

Why this matters for planning

Inflation is the reason a retirement plan cannot be built in today's dollars without adjustment, and it is the reason a nominal raise can be a real pay cut. Both of those are handled directly by the retirement calculator and the pay raise calculator.

It is also why cash held for a long horizon is not safe in the sense people mean. The number does not fall; what it buys does.

What this does not cover

• Regional differences. BLS publishes indexes for individual metropolitan areas; this uses the national average.
• Category indexes. Food, housing, and medical care each have their own series and each moves differently.
• Wage growth. A comparison of prices, not of what people earn.
• Alternative measures. Chained CPI, PCE, and the CPI-W used for Social Security adjustments all give different answers.
• Future inflation. Nobody publishes a forecast we would be willing to put in a calculator.

See our sources for the series and its retrieval date.