Roth IRA Calculator (2026)

How does this Roth IRA calculator work — and what does it assume?

Every result on this page comes from four assumptions, stated here rather than buried in a widget. One: contributions land at the end of each year and compound annually — the conservative convention, since money you actually deposit in January grows longer than the model gives it credit for. Two: with “Max my contributions” switched on, the 2026 limits ($7,500 under 50; $8,600 at 50-plus) stay frozen for the whole projection — also conservative, and quantified in the frozen-limit section below. Three: the 6% default is an after-inflation return, so the final balance reads in today’s dollars, not inflated future dollars. Four: growth is a single deterministic rate with no year-to-year dispersion; if you want the range of outcomes instead of one line, that lives in the full growth projector.

The formula is one line — the future value of an end-of-year annuity: FV = C × ((1.06)^35 − 1) / 0.06. At the defaults ($7,500 a year, 35 years, 6%), the growth factor is 111.4348, and 7,500 × 111.4348 = $835,761. None of the calculators surveyed below prints its formula; a retirement projection shouldn’t require trusting a black box.

Here is what five major calculators assume when you change nothing — and how this page compares. As far as we could find, nobody publishes this comparison — one entry had to be reconstructed from template documentation because the calculator itself won’t say.

One structural note: three of the biggest brands — Fidelity, Bankrate, and Schwab — serve their calculators as scripts that render blank or blocked to automated crawlers, which is why every number on this page sits in plain static HTML you can read, check, and cite.

Can you actually contribute what you just typed?

A single filer with $200,000 of MAGI cannot put a dollar directly into a Roth IRA in 2026 — yet many calculators will cheerfully project 30 years of $8,600 annual contributions for exactly that person. The compounding math on this page is only as real as your eligibility, so before trusting any projection, check your income against the 2026 income limits.

Per IRS Notice 2025-67, the 2026 Roth IRA MAGI phase-outs are:

Inside the band, your limit shrinks in proportion to how far in you are. One data point: a single filer under 50 with $160,500 of MAGI sits exactly halfway through the $15,000 band, so the limit is half of $7,500 — $3,750, not $7,500. The reduced figure always rounds up to the next $10 and never drops below $200 until you are fully phased out; those mechanics come from Treas. Reg. §1.408A-3 (trust its rules, not its 1998-era dollar examples).

Above the top of your band, the direct limit is $0 — but that is not the end of the analysis. High earners routinely fund Roth IRAs through a nondeductible traditional contribution followed by a conversion; our backdoor Roth calculator handles the pro-rata catch that decides whether that move is actually tax-free for you.

There is a second, quieter gate: you also need taxable compensation at least equal to what you contribute. The real limit is the lesser of $7,500 ($8,600 at 50+) or your compensation for the year — a student who earned $3,000 can contribute at most $3,000. (A non-working spouse can lean on the working spouse’s compensation through a spousal IRA, filing jointly.)

Two more handoffs before you rely on the projection. For a plain yes/no on your filing status and income, check whether you can contribute in about a minute. And because MAGI is not the AGI on line 11 of your 1040 — it adds back the foreign earned income exclusion, among other items, and subtracts Roth conversion income — estimate your MAGI before deciding which side of $153,000 you sit on.

What are the 2026 contribution limits behind the defaults?

The defaults come straight from IRS Notice 2025-67: $7,500 if you're under 50 for all of 2026, and $8,600 if you turn 50 by December 31 — the extra $1,100 is the age-50 catch-up. Both numbers moved from 2025:

That $1,100 is the real news. The catch-up sat at $1,000 from 2006 through 2025 — twenty consecutive tax years without an adjustment. SECURE 2.0 §108 finally made it CPI-indexed in $100 increments starting in 2024, but rounding held it at $1,000 for 2024 and 2025, so 2026 is the first year the catch-up has moved since it reached $1,000 in 2006. Any calculator or article still saying “plus $1,000 if you're 50 or older” is quoting a figure that was right for two decades and is now stale.

Compounded, it isn't small: an extra $1,100 every year from age 50 through 64 — fifteen contributions growing at 6% — adds $25,604 to the ending balance at 65. That's the entire gap between typing $7,500 and $8,600 into the contribution field for those years.

One rule no input field can enforce: the limit is aggregate across all of your traditional and Roth IRAs combined — per person, not per account. A Roth at Fidelity, a Roth at Schwab, and an old traditional IRA share one $7,500 (or $8,600) ceiling; splitting across three accounts does not triple it. The full 2026 contribution limits page covers the income phase-outs and the reduced-limit worksheet that can shrink your personal number below these figures.

The window runs long but closes hard: contributions for tax year 2026 are accepted through April 15, 2027, and a filing extension does not move that date (Pub 590-A). The asymmetry is worth remembering — extensions buy no time to make a contribution, but they do buy time to undo one, which matters once you see what an excess contribution costs.

What rate of return should you use?

Use 6% if you want the answer in today's dollars. The S&P 500 returned 10.02% per year from 1928 through 2025 — nominal, with dividends reinvested, geometric average — per the Damodaran dataset at NYU Stern, which runs through 2025 (most sites still quote endpoints of 2023 or 2024). Subtract long-run inflation of roughly 3% and you're left with about 6–7% in real terms. That's why major calculators cluster their defaults at 6–7% and none default to 10%: a 6% input makes the output readable as today's purchasing power, not inflated future dollars.

The most common projection mistake is counting inflation twice. Typing 10% because "that's what stocks return," then reading the result as money you could spend today, double-counts it — the 10% already contains roughly 3 points of inflation. Pick one frame and stay in it: 10% in, future dollars out; 6% in, today's dollars out. The gap is not small. At 3% inflation, a dollar 40 years from now buys about 31 cents of today's goods, so a nominal projection overstates real purchasing power roughly threefold on a 40-year horizon.

If 6% feels pessimistic, check your anchor. The most recent decade (2016–2025) returned 14.68% per year — almost 5 points above the long-run mean — and anyone who started investing during it has never personally experienced an average market. The long-run 10.02% also contains 2000–2009, a full decade in which the S&P 500 lost money. Returns are not guaranteed to match either stretch.

Use the geometric average, never the arithmetic one. The same 1928–2025 data produce an arithmetic mean of 11.85% — the average of the individual yearly returns, which is not the rate a balance compounds at. Volatility drag pulls the compound (geometric) rate down to 10.02%, nearly 2 points lower. A projection built on 11.85% overstates a 40-year lump-sum balance by more than 90%.

One thing the rate field can't capture: a Roth IRA is not a rate product. The account itself pays nothing — returns come entirely from what you hold inside it, whether that's a stock index fund, bonds, or cash. If that distinction is new, does a Roth IRA earn interest and Roth IRA interest rates walk through the mechanics.

Finally, any single rate hides the range of outcomes. An average tells you the center of the distribution, not where your 30 years will land — and with ongoing contributions, the sequence of returns matters, not just the mean. For a 10th–90th percentile range instead of one point estimate, use the Monte Carlo view in the growth projector.

What will your Roth IRA be worth at 6%? Three worked examples

Every figure below is what this calculator produces at those exact inputs: $7,500 contributed at the end of each year, a 6% annual return, a $0 starting balance, and retirement at 65. The $7,500 is the 2026 IRA limit (per IRS Notice 2025-67) held frozen — no assumed future cost-of-living increases — so each number is reproducible with the standard future-value formula and matches the calculator's own convention.

Read the growth-share column first. Start at 25 and 74% of the ending balance — $860,715 of the $1,160,715 — is investment growth rather than money you deposited. Start at 45 and growth is only 46%; your own contributions are still the majority. Same formula, same 6% — the only input that changed is the number of compounding years.

The ten-year cost of waiting sits between the first two rows: starting at 25 instead of 35 means contributing $75,000 more over a career but retiring with $567,778 more. If you want any balance split into contributions versus growth year by year, the breakdown section further down this page does exactly that.

These rows answer the generic version of the question; your age, balance, and rate won't match them exactly — that's what the calculator above is for. For the explanation rather than the tool — why the growth share climbs with time, what a 6% assumption does and doesn't promise — the companion FAQ what will my Roth IRA be worth walks through the same math in prose.

Where does the final balance actually come from?

Run the default scenario — $7,500 a year (the 2026 limit) from age 30 to 65, 6% return, contributions credited at year-end — and the projection ends at $835,761. Only $262,500 of that is money you deposited. The other $573,261, 69% of the final balance, is growth. Contributions are the minority partner. Here is where that growth actually arrives, decade by decade:

Read the growth column bottom-up. The final five years alone generate $205,324 — more than the first twenty years combined ($23,856 + $102,036 = $125,892), on a quarter of the money ($37,500 of contributions versus $150,000). The final 15 years produce $447,369 of growth, 78% of the total, while receiving only 43% of the contributions. Compounding is back-loaded: the smooth curve most calculators draw hides the fact that nearly everything happens at the end.

The mechanism is the rule of 72. At 6%, money doubles roughly every 12 years. A dollar contributed at 30 gets 35 years — almost three doublings — and becomes $7.69 by 65. A dollar contributed at 55 gets 10 years, less than one doubling, and becomes $1.79. Early dollars aren't better dollars; they just sit through more doublings.

One honest caveat: the level 6% is an assumption, not a schedule. Real returns arrive unevenly, and because 78% of the growth is concentrated in the final 15 years, the market's behavior late in your run moves the outcome far more than its behavior early on. The back-loaded shape, though, holds at any positive rate.

This section decomposes your own projection from your actual start age. If the question nagging you is what starting earlier would have been worth — the price of the years you didn't contribute — that's a different calculation, and there's a dedicated tool for it.

How much is the Roth wrapper itself worth vs a taxable account?

Same deposits, same return, three tax treatments. The setup is illustrative, with every assumption visible: $7,500 contributed each year for 35 years, earning a 6% gross return split as 2% qualified dividends plus 4% price appreciation. In the taxable account, dividends are taxed at 15% each year and reinvested; the appreciation compounds untouched and is taxed at 15% long-term capital gains when everything is sold at 65. No state tax, no tax-loss harvesting.

Assumptions: contributions made at each year-end; qualified-dividend and long-term capital gains rate 15% throughout; no state tax, no net investment income tax, no tax-loss harvesting. The third column taxes all growth annually at a 25% ordinary rate, netting 4.5% per year.

The honest answer: the wrapper is worth $106,440, and it splits cleanly in two. Annual dividend taxes cut the compounding rate from 6% to 5.7%, costing $51,520 by year 35 — $784,241 instead of the Roth’s $835,761. At sale, the account carries $418,107 of basis (contributions plus reinvested after-tax dividends) and $366,134 of embedded gain; 15% of that gain is a $54,920 exit tax, leaving $729,321 spendable. $51,520 during accumulation plus $54,920 at the exit equals $106,440.

The standard method roughly doubles that number. Most large calculators — Calculator.net’s approach — tax all growth every year at an ordinary marginal rate, typically 25%. That turns 6% into a 4.5% net return and produces $611,225, implying a $224,536 Roth advantage: 2.1 times the honest figure. The conclusion is right; the magnitude is roughly double. Broad index-fund growth is mostly deferred appreciation taxed once at capital-gains rates, not ordinary income taxed annually.

The honest number can shrink further. A retiree who sells while taxable income stays inside the 0% long-term capital gains bracket — up to $49,450 single or $98,900 married filing jointly in 2026 — owes less than $54,920 at liquidation — possibly $0 if sales are spread across enough low-income years. The wrapper is worth the taxes you would actually have paid, nothing more: more for bond interest and REIT dividends taxed at ordinary rates every year, less for a buy-and-hold index fund sold in a low-income year. That same trade-off drives which investments belong in which account.

One boundary: this compares a Roth IRA against a taxable brokerage account only. Whether to pay tax now (Roth) or later (Traditional) is a separate decision with its own calculator, linked from the after-tax section below.

Why do big-brand calculators understate a max-contributor's balance?

Every big-brand Roth IRA calculator takes your annual contribution as one static input and holds it flat for the entire projection — 30 or 40 years of a number that is, by statute, indexed to inflation. IRC §219(b)(5)(C) moves the limit in $500 steps as CPI accumulates: $6,500 in 2023, $7,000 in 2024–2025, $7,500 in 2026. The full contribution limit history shows the staircase going back decades. Freezing today's $7,500 for 35 years silently assumes the limit never moves again.

For anyone who maxes out every year, the understatement is six figures. At this page's defaults — 35 years, 6% return — here is the same saver both ways:

Of the roughly $302,700 gap, about $149,500 is the extra deposits themselves; the other $153,200 or so is compound growth on those deposits. No major calculator shows this split, because showing it requires committing to an inflation assumption — which is exactly the honest catch.

Future limit increases depend on inflation and are projections, not statutory promises. The limit sat at $7,000 for two straight years because CPI didn't clear the $500 rounding threshold. The defensible framing is conditional — if indexing continues at roughly CPI, contributions rise around 2.5% per year on average — and no one should quote a specific future-year limit as fact. We don't.

The calculator on this page holds the limit frozen too — deliberately. A frozen limit is the conservative floor: if you max out every year, your real outcome likely lands somewhere between the frozen path and the escalated one. To run the escalating scenario, use the contribution-escalation toggle in the growth projector, where you set the escalation rate yourself. One modeling detail to know: that tool escalates the base limit but holds the $1,100 age-50 catch-up constant. The catch-up received its first-ever inflation adjustment in 2026 — its first move since 2006, per SECURE 2.0 §108 and IRS Notice 2025-67 — so its future path is even less predictable than the base limit's.

When in the 15.5-month window should you contribute?

A 2026 Roth IRA contribution can land any time from January 1, 2026 to April 15, 2027 — a 15.5-month window. Where in that window your money arrives is worth more than most savers assume. Three habits, identical rules, identical $262,500 of total deposits over 35 years at 6%:

The gap between first and last is $64,230, and none of it comes from contributing more. Every dollar is the same dollar — the January contributor’s money simply compounds about 15.5 months longer than the deadline contributor’s, every year, for 35 years.

This is not market timing. Contributing on January 1 is not a bet that stocks are cheap in January; it’s the arithmetic that money invested earlier spends more time compounding, in expectation. If writing one $7,500 check feels like a timing decision you’ll postpone, automate $625 a month instead: it captures $36,829 of the $64,230 gap and removes the decision entirely.

The same convention question explains why two calculators disagree on identical inputs. $7,500 a year for 35 years at 6% returns $835,761 if the calculator assumes end-of-year deposits (this page’s default, and Calculator.net’s), $885,906 if it assumes start-of-year (the template behind Bankrate and many bank-site calculators), and something in between if it models monthly deposits. That’s a $50,145 spread from an assumption almost no calculator page discloses — check the deposit-timing convention before concluding one tool is broken.

One thing this section deliberately skips: the mechanics of the window itself — designating a January–April deposit as a prior-year contribution, and why a filing extension does not extend the April 15, 2027 cutoff. Those live with the contribution deadline rules; here, the only lever is when your money starts compounding.

Is a $1 million Roth the same as a $1 million 401(k)?

No. A $1,000,000 Roth IRA balance is $1,000,000 of spendable money. Qualified distributions — taken after age 59½ with the 5-year rule satisfied — are entirely tax-free. That is why this calculator shows one number with no asterisk: the projected balance is the amount you keep.

A nominal $1,000,000 in a pre-tax 401(k) or traditional IRA is a different object. Every dollar withdrawn is taxed as ordinary income, so at a 22–24% effective withdrawal rate it is worth roughly $760,000–$780,000 in spendable terms. The exact haircut depends on your future bracket, your state's income tax, and whatever Congress legislates between now and your retirement — none of which is knowable today. (The 2025 tax law made the current federal rate schedule permanent, meaning the old automatic expiration is gone — not that Congress can never change rates.)

That gap is the most misleading default in the retirement-calculator genre: multi-account tools display Roth and pre-tax balances side by side as if the columns were comparable. They are not — it is an apples-to-oranges pair. The honest comparison is after-tax to after-tax, and that requires assuming a withdrawal tax rate and stating it, because a pre-tax balance has no fixed spendable value without one.

One scope line: this is a note about what this calculator's output means, not a recommendation to fund one account over the other. That decision turns on your marginal tax rate today versus your expected rate in retirement — run it in the Roth vs Traditional calculator, and see Roth IRA vs traditional IRA and Roth IRA vs 401(k) for the full trade-offs.

How much tax-free income does that balance buy — and how long can it keep compounding?

Run this calculator on its defaults and you get $835,761. The 4% rule translates that balance into income: about $33,430 a year — roughly $2,786 a month — every dollar federal-tax-free as long as the withdrawals are qualified. The 4% rule is a planning heuristic drawn from historical 30-year US market data, not a guarantee; a bad first decade of returns or a 35-year retirement can break it. As a first pass, though, multiplying an ending balance by 0.04 gives a defensible annual income figure.

That income also stays out of two formulas retirees run into: qualified Roth withdrawals don’t count toward the MAGI that drives Medicare IRMAA surcharges or the taxation of Social Security benefits, so $33,430 out of a Roth is invisible to both. Our withdrawal explainer covers what “qualified” requires — age 59½ plus the 5-year clock.

The bigger structural point is what the right-hand edge of the projection chart actually means. A Roth IRA has no lifetime required minimum distributions for the owner (IRC §408A(c)(5)), so the curve never has to stop. A traditional IRA projection structurally breaks at RMD age — 73 if you were born 1951–1959, 75 if born in 1960 or later. From that year forward the IRS forces taxable distributions out annually — starting near 4% of the balance and rising each year, roughly the 4% rule made mandatory and taxable — so the smooth compounding curve a calculator draws past 73 is fiction for a traditional IRA. A Roth’s right-hand edge is real for as long as you choose to let it run.

That runway is worth real money. Leave the default $835,761 untouched for 10 more years at the same 6% assumption — spending from other sources first — and it grows to about $1,496,712: roughly $661,000 of additional tax-free compounding that no rule forces you to surrender. Nothing in the tax code ever requires a Roth IRA owner to take a withdrawal.

The runway can even extend past you: under the 10-year rule, a non-spouse heir owes no annual RMDs on an inherited Roth in years 1–9 — only full depletion by the end of year 10 (per TD 10001) — up to a decade of additional tax-free growth, with the mechanics covered in our inherited Roth IRA calculator.

Should you model one account — or your household?

The $7,500 limit ($8,600 at 50 or older) is per person, aggregated across every IRA that person owns — Traditional and Roth combined. Opening three Roth IRAs at three brokerages does not create $22,500 of room; all three accounts share one $7,500 cap. It is also not a household number: there is no such thing as a joint IRA.

But a married couple filing jointly holds two separate limits, and that is the biggest lever most calculator users never pull. Each spouse can fund their own Roth IRA — including a spouse with no earned income, who can contribute on the strength of the working spouse's compensation under the spousal IRA rules. That doubles the contribution stream to $15,000 a year, or $17,200 once both spouses are 50 or older.

The mechanics take two sentences: the couple must file a joint return, and their combined IRA contributions cannot exceed the taxable compensation reported on that return (IRS Pub 590-A). Skip the joint return — married filing separately — and the spousal contribution is off the table entirely, the single most commonly misstated detail in this rule.

To model a household, run the calculator once per spouse and add the two results. The doubled default scenario — $15,000 a year for 35 years at 6% — ends at $1,671,522, exactly double the one-person projection on the same assumptions.

One ceiling still binds both spouses: each contribution tests against the couple's joint MAGI, with the 2026 phase-out running from $242,000 to $252,000 (IRS Notice 2025-67). Two limits, one income test — a household above $252,000 loses direct-contribution room for both spouses at once, not one at a time.

What does a fund's expense ratio do to the projection?

A 0.75% expense ratio does not skim 0.75% off this year's balance once. It comes out of your return every single year, which makes it a permanent subtraction from the compounding rate itself: a fund that earns 6% but charges 0.75% compounds at 5.25%.

That 0.75-point haircut is invisible in any single year and enormous over 35 of them. On this page's default scenario — $7,500 a year for 35 years — it costs $122,222: the $835,761 final balance drops to $713,539. Nearly 15% of the entire outcome is consumed by a fee that reads as less than one percent.

The mental model is one subtraction: take whatever return you'd type into the calculator above and remove your fund's expense ratio first. Holding a 0.75% fund but expecting 6% markets? Type 5.25%. A 0.03% index fund? Type 5.97% — close enough to 6% that the fee barely registers, which is the whole argument for cheap funds.

To run the numbers on your own fund's expense ratio — including what switching to a cheaper one is worth in dollars — use the fee-drag calculator.

What changes in 2027 — and what still applies to your 2026 contribution?

Your 2026 Roth IRA contribution can still earn the Saver's Credit (IRC §25B): a nonrefundable credit of 10% to 50% of up to $2,000 in contributions ($4,000 if married filing jointly), available if your 2026 AGI is at or below $40,250 single, $60,375 head of household, or $80,500 married filing jointly (per IRS Notice 2025-67). Plenty of 2026-season articles skip straight to the Match — but the credit is the benefit that applies to the contribution you make this year.

Starting with tax year 2027, the Saver's Match (SECURE 2.0 §103, IRC §6433) replaces it. Instead of reducing your tax bill, the federal government deposits a 50% match on the first $2,000 you contribute — up to $1,000 per person, per spouse for joint filers — and it is paid even if you owe zero tax. That fixes the old credit's core weakness: nonrefundability meant the lowest earners often got nothing.

The Match phases out by modified AGI over these statutory ranges: $20,500–$35,500 single, $30,750–$53,250 head of household, $41,000–$71,000 married filing jointly. Those are the bases written into §6433, indexed for tax years after 2026 — do not treat them as final 2027 figures.

Now the trap: per §6433(e) the match is deposited into a non-Roth account the filer designates — even when the qualifying contribution went into a Roth — and it is taxed as ordinary income on withdrawal. Contribute $2,000 to your Roth IRA in 2027 and — if you qualify for the full match — the $1,000 lands in a traditional IRA or pre-tax plan account, not next to your tax-free money.

For eligible savers that is still a guaranteed 50% first-year return no projection calculator on this page — or anywhere else — models. To see your own match, phase-out position, and household total, use the Saver's Match calculator.

Which specialized Roth IRA calculator do you need?

This calculator answers one question: how much a Roth IRA can grow. Every adjacent question has a purpose-built tool. Five groups, each mapped to a stage of the decision.

Can I contribute, and how much?

• Can I Contribute? — filing status and income in, your exact 2026 limit out, including the phase-out worksheet math.
• MAGI Estimator — when you're near the $153,000 (single) or $242,000 (MFJ) threshold and need to know what actually counts as MAGI.
• Backdoor Roth & Pro-Rata Calculator — when your income is over the limit and you want in anyway; models the pro-rata tax.
• Saver's Match Eligibility Checker — whether the 50% federal match (up to $1,000) will apply to you starting in 2027.

How will it grow?

• Roth IRA Growth Projector — the deep version of the calculator above: rising limits, catch-up at 50, inflation-adjusted results.
• What Starting Earlier Is Worth — the dollar cost of each year you wait.
• Fee-Drag Calculator — what a 0.50% expense ratio removes over 30 years.
• Asset Location Architect — which holdings belong in the Roth versus taxable versus pre-tax.
• Roth IRA Statistics — how your balance compares with real account data by age.

Should I convert?

• Roth vs. Traditional — the tax-rate-now versus tax-rate-later decision itself.
• True Cost of a Roth Conversion — the full bill on one conversion, including bracket spillover.
• Multi-Year Conversion Planner — spreading a large pre-tax balance across several years of brackets.
• Roth Conversion Ladder — building penalty-free access before 59½ for early retirement.

Taking money out

• Withdrawal Explainer — can you take a specific dollar out today, tax- and penalty-free?
• Required Beginning Date — when RMDs start on pre-tax accounts (73 or 75 by birth year; your own Roth IRA never has them).
• Missed RMD Penalty Calculator — what a missed RMD costs and how the correction window works.

Inherited a Roth IRA

• Which Beneficiary Rules Apply? — start here: eligible designated beneficiary or the 10-year rule?
• Inherited Roth IRA Decision Engine — models your withdrawal options in dollars.
• 10-Year Rule Schedule — plans depletion by December 31 of year ten.

The one-liners above are deliberately short. The full tools index is the canonical directory — every tool with its inputs, assumptions, and limitations in one place.

All tools run in your browser; nothing you enter is transmitted or stored.

Growth & planning

Contributions & eligibility

Conversions & the backdoor

Withdrawals, RMDs & inherited