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Social Security Calculator

U.S. only tools

A retirement benefit is not a pot of your own contributions coming back. It is a percentage of what you earned, worked out from the years you earned it, and then adjusted one last time for the age you decide to start. Three numbers decide almost all of it: the average of your 35 best years, the three-bracket formula that turns that average into a primary insurance amount, and the age you claim.

Social Security Calculator - Danfio

https://danfio.com/tools/social-security-calculator/ - printed from this page

Currency: USD ($) - display only, nothing was converted

Your full retirement age comes from this year. Born on 1 January? SSA uses the year before.

The earliest is 62 and the credits for waiting stop at 70.

SSA pays from a month, not a birthday, so the month changes the answer.

$

In the dollars of today, before tax. Above $184,500 a year, earnings stop counting.

A year without earnings counts as a zero, which is why the average always spans 35 years.

$

Leave this at 0 if you are not working. Started before full retirement age, a benefit is trimmed while earnings run above $24,480.

Results update as you type. Nothing leaves your device.

Currency symbol

Symbol only - nothing is converted and no exchange rate is used. Figures quoted in the explanation text stay as the sources publish them.

A month starting at 67

$2,665

From an average indexed monthly earnings of $6,000 estimated from what you earn now. The primary insurance amount is $2,665.80 and full retirement age is 67.

Primary insurance amount
$2,665.80
Share of it you are paid
100%
A year
$31,980
Against starting at full retirement age
the same

What every whole claiming age pays, from the same record

Age it startsShare of the PIAA monthA yearAgainst full retirement age
6270%$1,866$22,392-$799
6375%$1,999$23,988-$666
6480%$2,132$25,584-$533
6586.67%$2,310$27,720-$355
6693.33%$2,488$29,856-$177
67100%$2,665$31,980the same
68108%$2,879$34,548+$214
69116%$3,092$37,104+$427
70124%$3,305$39,660+$640

Whole ages only: a row for every month from 62 to 70 would be 97 of them. The comparison is against a benefit starting at full retirement age of 67, which pays $2,665 a month.

This is full retirement age, so the payment is the primary insurance amount rounded down to the dollar - nothing reduced, nothing credited. Starting earlier takes 5/9 of one percent off for each of the first 36 months; waiting adds 2/3 of one percent a month, up to age 69.
Estimated, not quoted: $72,000 a year counted over 35 years, divided by the 420 months in 35 years, is an average indexed monthly earnings of $6,000. SSA builds that figure from your whole record, lifting each year's earnings to today's wage level before averaging, so a record that started low and rose fast lands above this estimate and a record with years off lands below it. Your statement carries the real figure.

What this figure leaves out

  • Federal income tax. Up to 85 percent of a benefit is taxable once other income passes the thresholds, and SSA can withhold the tax from the payment.
  • The Medicare Part B premium, which is deducted before the payment reaches you. SSA publishes the amount each year.
  • Spousal and survivor benefits. A spouse can receive up to 50% of this primary insurance amount, and no less than 32.5% of it starting at 62, but the amount also depends on the spouse's own record, which is not on this page.
  • The family maximum, which caps what a worker and their dependents can be paid between them.
  • The cost-of-living adjustments. This is a benefit under the 2026 formula and in the dollars of today; each December's adjustment lifts it from there, so the table above is a fair comparison between claiming ages rather than a forecast of a check in a future year.
  • Disability, survivors and Supplemental Security Income, and any earnings test year other than the first one.

This page works that out under the 2026 rules, in the dollars of today, and it shows the whole 62-to-70 table rather than one figure - because the difference between the first row and the last is roughly three quarters more money, every month, for life. There are two ways in: the average indexed monthly earnings figure off your Social Security statement, which makes the answer exact, or what you earn now, which makes it an estimate and says so.

About this social security calculator

While a benefit is built from a lifetime of earnings, the single decision left in your hands is the age you claim. This page works the 2026 formula in today’s dollars and lays out the whole 62-to-70 table rather than one figure, because the gap between the first row and the last is roughly three quarters more money every month for life.

The average indexed monthly earnings, the three-bracket formula and the early-or-late credits are all published rules, applied to the figures you supply and printed beside the answer. No account is required and no earnings record is stored: every calculation happens on your own machine and no request is made.

Cost-of-living adjustments after a benefit starts, federal income tax on it, the Medicare Part B premium, spousal and survivor benefits and the family maximum all sit outside the arithmetic. Let SSA be the authority on your own award. Enter your statement figure for an exact answer. Not investment or insurance advice; quotes come from a licensed provider.

How this social security calculator works

Three steps: an average, a formula, an age

First SSA averages up to 35 years of your earnings, each year lifted to the wage level of the year you turn 62, and divides by the 420 months in those 35 years. Years you did not work count as zero, which is why the divisor is always 35 years rather than however long you happened to work. The result is rounded down to the dollar, and it is called the average indexed monthly earnings, or AIME.

Then the AIME goes through three brackets. For 2026 the first $1,286 of it is paid at 90 percent, the amount between $1,286 and $7,749 at 32 percent, and everything above $7,749 at 15 percent. The total is rounded down to the next lower ten cents and is the primary insurance amount (PIA) - the benefit you would receive if you started exactly at full retirement age. Those bend points are republished every autumn; the ones on this page are the 2026 figures.

The last step is the age. Start before full retirement age and the benefit is cut, permanently. Start after and it grows by delayed retirement credits, at 2/3 of one percent a month, which is 8 percent a year. The final payment is the adjusted PIA rounded down to the whole dollar.

What the claiming age costs, month by month

The early-retirement reduction is two rates, not one. The first 36 months before full retirement age cost 5/9 of one percent each; every month beyond that costs 5/12 of one percent. With a full retirement age of 67, sixty months early is 36 months at 5/9 of one percent plus 24 months at 5/12 of one percent, which is 30 percent - so a benefit started at 62 is 70 percent of the PIA, for the rest of the recipient's life.

The published percentages at each whole year, for anyone born in 1960 or later, are 70 at 62, then 75, 80, 86 2/3, 93 1/3 and 100 at 67 - and 124 at 70. Delayed credits stop once 69 is over: a benefit started at 70 and one started at 75 pay exactly the same, so waiting past 70 buys nothing but three fewer years of payments.

Full retirement age itself depends on the year you were born, and it is not a birth date you can look up in one line: someone born in 1959 has a full retirement age of 66 and 10 months, someone born in 1955 reaches it at 66 and 2 months, and anyone born in 1960 or later waits until 67. Anyone born on 1 January uses the previous year's row, which is SSA's own rule.

What this page does not model

Several things are left out on purpose, each one a place where a calculator can be confidently wrong rather than merely approximate. The first is the wage indexing of your actual record: this page takes your earnings at face value, so if your pay kept pace with average wages the estimate is close, and if it started low and rose fast the real figure is higher.

The second is the cost-of-living adjustments that arrive every December once a benefit starts. This is a 2026-formula figure in today's dollars, which is the right way to compare claiming ages and the wrong way to forecast a check in 2041. The third and fourth are the federal income tax on benefits, which can reach 85 percent of them depending on other income, and the Medicare Part B premium, which is deducted before the payment reaches you. Both are real and both are published elsewhere; neither changes the comparison this page is for.

Spousal and survivor benefits. They are percentages of somebody else's PIA - a spouse's benefit is at most half of the worker's PIA and no less than 32.5 percent of it starting at 62, and a survivor's benefit is the larger of the two records - but they also depend on the other person's claiming age and record, which this page never sees. The family maximum caps what a worker and dependents can be paid between them, and it is not worked out here either.

Two ways in, and what each one proves

Typing the average indexed monthly earnings from a statement makes the page exact: it applies the published bend points to a number SSA has already worked out for that record. Typing what you earn now instead produces an estimate, because the page does not know the other 34 years of the record or how each year was indexed before the average was drawn.

Both paths use the same bend points and the same age percentages, so the 62-to-70 table is worth the same in either case once the AIME is settled. The page says which of the two it is answering, because one is a quotation and the other is an estimate, and the difference matters for planning.

Worked examples

Each example below was run through the calculator on this page when the site was built, so the numbers match what you see when you enter the same inputs.

SSA's own maximum-taxable example, claimed at 62 and one month

Year you were born: 1,964 · Age the benefit starts: 62 years · and: 1 month · Work it out from: My average indexed monthly earnings, from my statement · Average indexed monthly earnings: $14,358.00

A month starting at 62 and 1 month

$2,969

From an average indexed monthly earnings of $14,358, taken off your statement. The primary insurance amount is $4,216.90 and full retirement age is 67.

Primary insurance amount: $4,216.90 · Share of it you are paid: 70.42% · A year: $35,628 · Against starting at full retirement age: -$1,247 a month

This is the one example on the page that is not this calculator's arithmetic at all - it is SSA's. Their benefit-amounts page works the same record out as an AIME of $14,358, a primary insurance amount of $4,216.90 and a payment of $2,969 from exact age 62 and 1 month. A page that answered anything else here would be a page worth closing.

A $6,000 average indexed monthly earnings, claimed at 62

Year you were born: 1,965 · Age the benefit starts: 62 years · and: 0 months · Work it out from: My average indexed monthly earnings, from my statement · Average indexed monthly earnings: $6,000.00

A month starting at 62

$1,866

From an average indexed monthly earnings of $6,000, taken off your statement. The primary insurance amount is $2,665.80 and full retirement age is 67.

Primary insurance amount: $2,665.80 · Share of it you are paid: 70% · A year: $22,392 · Against starting at full retirement age: -$799 a month

The same record claimed at 70 pays 24 percent above the primary insurance amount instead of 30 percent below it, which is where the "waiting is worth three quarters more" comes from. Nothing about the record changes between the two rows; only the age does.

Someone earning $72,000 a year for 35 years, waiting until 70

Year you were born: 1,965 · Age the benefit starts: 70 years · and: 0 months · Work it out from: What I earn a year now · What you earn a year: $72,000.00 · Years with earnings on the record: 35 years

A month starting at 70

$3,305

From an average indexed monthly earnings of $6,000 estimated from what you earn now. The primary insurance amount is $2,665.80 and full retirement age is 67.

Primary insurance amount: $2,665.80 · Share of it you are paid: 124% · A year: $39,660 · Against starting at full retirement age: +$640 a month

The earnings path: $72,000 a year counted over 35 years, divided by the 420 months in 35 years, is an average of $6,000 a month. This is an estimate rather than a quotation, because SSA indexes each year of the record to today's wage level before averaging and this page does not.

The same $6,000 record, claimed at full retirement age

Year you were born: 1,965 · Age the benefit starts: 67 years · and: 0 months · Work it out from: My average indexed monthly earnings, from my statement · Average indexed monthly earnings: $6,000.00

A month starting at 67

$2,665

From an average indexed monthly earnings of $6,000, taken off your statement. The primary insurance amount is $2,665.80 and full retirement age is 67.

Primary insurance amount: $2,665.80 · Share of it you are paid: 100% · A year: $31,980 · Against starting at full retirement age: the same

At full retirement age the payment is $2,665 a month, which is the primary insurance amount itself: $1,866 at 62 is 30 percent below that figure and $3,305 at 70 is 24 percent above it, so the claiming age carries $1,439 a month between the lowest and highest rows.

Frequently asked questions

Is this the same figure as the estimate on my Social Security statement?

No, and the statement wins. This page applies the 2026 formula to a figure you type in, in today's dollars. Your statement knows your actual record, indexes each year the way the law requires, and shows what you would receive at 62, at full retirement age and at 70 under its own assumptions about your future earnings. Where the two disagree, the difference is almost always the earnings record, not the formula - the bend points and the age percentages are the same ones SSA publishes.

So should I wait until 70?

That is a question about how long you need the money to last, not a question arithmetic can settle: comparing two claiming ages only pays off with a date of death, and nobody has that. What the numbers do say is that starting early gives up 30 percent for life with a full retirement age of 67, that delaying adds 8 percent a year, and that the credits stop at 69. The rest - health, other income, whether you keep working, a spouse's record - is where the decision actually lives.

Why does it ask for my year of birth rather than my age?

Because that is how SSA's own table is written: full retirement age changes by year of birth, in two-month steps between 1938 and 1943 and again between 1955 and 1960, and it has been 67 for everyone born since 1960. One wrinkle is SSA's own: a person born on 1 January uses the previous year's row, which changes the answer by two months for a handful of birthdays.

I am still working. Does claiming early cost me more than that 30 percent?

For the years before full retirement age, yes, in a temporary way: a benefit claimed before full retirement age is reduced while earnings run above the exempt amount for the year of $24,480, at one withheld dollar for every two earned above it, and the withheld money is not lost. Those months are credited and the benefit is recomputed - upward - when full retirement age is reached. In the year full retirement age is reached the limit is much higher, $65,160, and it applies only to the months before that month.

Does the benefit rise with inflation once it starts?

Yes. Each December brings a cost-of-living adjustment, and the most recent one is 2.8 percent, effective with December 2025 benefits that are payable in January 2026. Because that adjustment is applied to whatever benefit you are already receiving, it does not change the ranking of the rows in the table above: the percentage gap between claiming at 62 and claiming at 70 stays roughly the same in every future year.

What if my spouse never worked?

Then a benefit can be paid on your record instead: at most half of your primary insurance amount, and no less than 32.5 percent of it if the spousal benefit starts at 62 with a full retirement age of 67 - the same two-rate reduction as your own benefit, applied to the half-PIA base. This page does not work that out, because the amount depends on the spouse's own record and claiming age as well, and a spousal figure built from half of the arithmetic would look more precise than it is.

How good is the estimate that comes from my salary?

Good enough to compare claiming ages, not good enough to plan a budget. It counts the salary you type for the number of years you name, then divides by 35 years of months, so years with no earnings are counted as zeros. What it cannot do is index each year of your record to today's wage level the way SSA does, which usually pushes the real figure up - sometimes by a few percent, sometimes more for a career that started low and rose quickly. The average indexed monthly earnings figure on your statement is the number to type in when you want the exact answer.

Is the benefit taxed, and is anything taken out before I receive it?

Both are possible. Up to 85 percent of a benefit counts as taxable income once your other income passes the thresholds, and you can ask SSA to withhold the tax rather than paying it quarterly. Medicare Part B premiums are deducted from the payment itself, with the amount published each year, so the figure that lands in a bank account is usually a little smaller than the figure this page prints.

Do I have to hand over my Social Security number or my earnings to use this?

You never have to, and the page has no way to take them: your year of birth, your earnings and the claiming age are turned into a benefit figure on your own machine, and no request carries them off because no upload endpoint exists behind this page. A network test in this site’s own suite fails our checks the moment any calculator page reaches out, which is how the promise is kept rather than merely published.

Assumptions and sources

  • SSA, Contribution and Benefit Base: the 2026 contribution and benefit base is $184,500, above which earnings are neither taxed for OASDI nor counted in a benefit computation. The 2025 figure was $176,100.
  • SSA, Benefit Formula Bend Points and Primary Insurance Amount: for a worker who becomes eligible in 2026 the bend points are $1,286 and $7,749, the formula is 90 percent / 32 percent / 15 percent of the three slices, and the result is rounded down to the next lower multiple of ten cents.
  • SSA, Social Security Benefit Amounts: up to 35 years of indexed earnings are averaged and divided by the months in those years, rounded down to the dollar - the AIME. The same page works an example: maximum-taxable earnings from age 22 gives an AIME of $14,358 and a PIA of $4,216.90 in 2026.
  • SSA, Normal Retirement Age: the table by year of birth, from 65 for 1937 and earlier to 67 for 1960 and later, including the rule that someone born on 1 January uses the previous year.
  • SSA, Early or Late Retirement, and the table Effect of Early or Delayed Retirement on Retirement Benefits: a benefit is reduced 5/9 of one percent for each of the first 36 months before full retirement age and 5/12 of one percent a month beyond that - 30 percent at 62 with a full retirement age of 67 - while delayed retirement credits add 2/3 of one percent a month, which is 8 percent a year, for anyone born in 1943 or later, with no credit after 69.
  • SSA, Cost-Of-Living Adjustments and Latest Cost-of-Living Adjustment: the latest COLA is 2.8 percent, effective with December 2025 benefits payable in January 2026, computed from the CPI-W. The national average wage index for 2024 is $69,846.57.
  • SSA, Exempt Amounts Under the Earnings Test: for 2026 the annual exempt amount is $24,480 for people who reach full retirement age after 2026 and $65,160 in the year full retirement age is reached, with one dollar of benefit withheld for every two (or three, respectively) of earnings above the exempt amount, and the withheld benefit recomputed at full retirement age.
  • SSA, Benefits for Spouses: the spousal benefit is at most half of the worker's primary insurance amount, reduced by 25/36 of one percent a month for the first 36 months and 5/12 of one percent beyond that, for a floor of 32.5 percent at 62 with a full retirement age of 67.
  • Not modelled here: the wage indexing of a visitor's actual earnings record, the cost-of-living adjustments after the benefit starts, federal income tax on benefits, the Medicare Part B premium, spousal and survivor benefits, the family maximum, and disability benefits.

Last reviewed 2026-09-20. Not investment or insurance advice; quotes come from a licensed provider. Read the full disclaimer.

Where a figure on this page comes from an official agency — HUD, IRS, FICO or a state body — the site keeps a dated snapshot of the source page in its sources library, and a scheduled job re-checks that snapshot, so the number can be traced back to the document it came from.

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