US Inflation Calculator
Compare the buying power of an amount between two months using the official US Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U).
Equivalent value
02 / 02Same US purchasing power in the ending month
—Equivalent amount over time
What the result means
The Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers tracks the price of a broad basket of US consumer goods and services. This calculator uses the not seasonally adjusted, all-items US city average series, identified by the Bureau of Labor Statistics as CUUR0000SA0. It compares the index in your starting month with the index in your ending month.
The equivalent amount is starting amount × ending CPI ÷ starting CPI. For example, if an index rises from 250 to 300, an amount of 1,000 in the first month would need to be 1,200 in the second month to match the same average US purchasing power. Cumulative inflation would be 20%; an unchanged nominal 1,000 would retain about 83.3% of its original buying power under this index.
This is a historical price-level comparison, not an investment return forecast. It does not account for the particular goods you buy, regional prices, taxes, wages, asset performance, or currency exchange rate changes. Changing the currency label only changes the unit displayed alongside the amount—it never turns US CPI into the inflation rate of Canada, Japan, China, Thailand or the euro area.
Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, CPI-U series CUUR0000SA0. Data retrieval date and latest available month appear beside the calculator. BLS.gov cannot vouch for the data or analyses derived from these data after the data have been retrieved from BLS.gov.