Federal Poverty Level Calculator
Your household, and the plan year
Your result will appear here
Fill in the fields on the left and this updates as you type.
Know what this estimate is based on
- Jurisdiction
- General mathematical model
- Scope and limitations
- Educational estimate only. Confirm the assumptions, current rules, fees, and rounding that apply to your situation before making a decision.
- Source links checked
- Jul 30, 2026
Built and regression-tested by Smart Tools Lab. It has not been individually reviewed by a licensed financial, tax, or legal professional.
How to use
- 01
Enter your household income for the year. The Marketplace works from modified adjusted gross income, which is close to your adjusted gross income with any tax-exempt interest, untaxed Social Security and excluded foreign income added back. Use what you expect for the whole year, not what you have earned so far.
- 02
Enter the number of people in your household: yourself, your spouse if you file jointly, and everyone you claim as a tax dependent. This is a tax household rather than the people living under your roof, so a dependent at college still counts and a roommate does not.
- 03
Choose the plan year, 2026 or 2027. The page then picks the right poverty guidelines for you, and they are not the ones you might expect: a Marketplace plan year runs on the guidelines published in the prior calendar year, so plan year 2026 uses the 2025 figures.
- 04
Set the Medicaid expansion flag to 1 if your state has adopted expansion or 0 if it has not. It changes which line matters at the bottom of the scale: 138% of the poverty line in an expansion state, or 100% as the floor for Marketplace credits where expansion was never adopted.
- 05
Read your percentage, then the distance to the nearest line, then the schedule. The schedule turns each line into a dollar income for your household size and says what that line decides, which is the part worth screenshotting before open enrollment.
Formula
Poverty line = the first-person guideline + the per-person amount times (household size − 1), taken from the guidelines the plan year uses: the 2025 guidelines for plan year 2026, the 2026 guidelines for plan year 2027. Your percentage = household income ÷ poverty line × 100. The dollar income at any line = poverty line × that percentage ÷ 100, so the 138% line for a household of 3 is $26,650 × 1.38. Distance to a line = the difference between your income and that line's dollar amount, and the page reports the nearest one in either direction. Alaska and Hawaii run separate guidelines and are not used here.
Example
A household of 3 expects $48,000 of income for plan year 2026. The poverty line for three people on the 2025 guidelines is $26,650, so the income is 180% of the poverty line. The lines in dollars are $26,650 at 100%, $36,777 at 138%, $39,975 at 150%, $53,300 at 200%, $66,625 at 250% and $106,600 at 400%. The household is above the first three and below the last three, and the nearest line is 200%, which sits $5,300 above the current income: earning that much more would move it past the point where cost-sharing reductions step down. Raise the income to $140,000 and the picture changes completely, to 525% of the poverty line, $33,400 clear of the 400% cliff and past the point where any premium tax credit exists.
Definitions
- Federal poverty line
- A yearly income figure published each January by the Department of Health and Human Services, rising with household size. It is used as a yardstick for Medicaid, CHIP and the Marketplace rather than as a measure of what life costs.
- Modified adjusted gross income
- The income measure the Marketplace uses: adjusted gross income with tax-exempt interest, untaxed Social Security benefits and excluded foreign income added back. It is not the same as take-home pay.
- Tax household
- You, your spouse if you file jointly, and everyone you claim as a tax dependent. Household size for these rules counts the tax household, not the people living in the home.
- Medicaid expansion
- A state's decision to cover adults under 65 up to 138% of the poverty line. Where a state did not adopt it, adults below 100% of the line often qualify for neither Medicaid nor a Marketplace credit.
- Cost-sharing reductions
- A separate benefit from the premium tax credit that lowers a Silver plan's deductible, copays and out-of-pocket maximum for households between 100% and 250% of the poverty line.
Good to know
What the poverty guidelines are, and what they are not
The federal poverty guidelines are a short table published each January by the Department of Health and Human Services. They give one income figure for a household of one and a fixed amount to add for each additional person, and that is the whole structure. On the 2026 guidelines a single person is $15,960 and each extra person adds $5,680, so a household of three comes to $27,320. On the 2025 guidelines, which a 2026 Marketplace plan year uses, the figures are $15,650 and $5,500, giving $26,650 for three people. The guidelines are deliberately crude. They do not vary by city or county, they take no account of what housing costs where you live, and they are not a measure of what a family needs to live on. What they are is an administrative yardstick: a single national number that dozens of programmes can point at when they need an income threshold. Medicaid, CHIP, the Marketplace premium tax credit, cost-sharing reductions, hospital charity care and many state programmes all define their limits as a percentage of this one table, which is why a figure like 138% or 400% turns up so often in discussions of health coverage. Two adjustments matter. Alaska and Hawaii have separate, higher guidelines, reflecting long-standing cost differences: on the 2026 figures Alaska starts at $19,950 and adds $7,100 per person, and Hawaii starts at $18,360 and adds $6,530. This page uses the 48-state and District of Columbia table, so anyone in those two states will find their true percentage lower than it shows. The second adjustment is the household definition. For these rules a household is a tax household, meaning you, your spouse if you file jointly, and everyone you claim as a dependent. A dependent studying in another state still counts; a roommate who files their own return does not, however much of the rent they pay.
Why a 2026 plan year runs on the 2025 guidelines
This is the single most common reason a figure on this page differs from a poverty guideline table someone has found elsewhere, and it catches out people who are being careful rather than careless. A Marketplace plan year uses the poverty guidelines that were in effect when open enrollment for that year began, which means the guidelines published in the prior calendar year. Plan year 2026 therefore runs on the 2025 guidelines and plan year 2027 on the 2026 ones. The reason is practical. Open enrollment for a plan year runs in the autumn before it starts, and people need to know what credit they qualify for at the moment they choose a plan. The guidelines for the year itself do not exist until the following January, by which time the year is already under way and coverage has begun. Fixing the plan year to the earlier table means the figures are known in advance and do not move underneath anyone mid-year. The practical effect is that the lines are slightly lower than the current-year table would suggest, which nudges every percentage slightly higher. For the household of three in this page's example, the 2025 guideline of $26,650 puts $48,000 of income at 180% of the poverty line. Measured against the 2026 guideline of $27,320, the same income would be 176%. The difference is small but it is not always harmless, because several of the lines are cliffs rather than slopes and a household sitting close to one can land on either side of it depending on which table is used. The page handles this for you: choose the plan year and it selects the right guidelines, and the stat under the poverty line says which year's figures it used. If you are checking the arithmetic against a published table, make sure you have the table for the prior year, not the current one.
The lines that actually decide something
Most percentages of the poverty line mean nothing at all. A handful decide real money, and those are the ones this page lists. At 100% sits the floor for Marketplace premium tax credits. In a state that did not expand Medicaid, a household below this line generally qualifies for neither Medicaid nor a credit, a situation usually called the coverage gap. For the example household of three that line is $26,650. At 138% sits Medicaid for adults under 65 in states that expanded it, $36,777 for that household. The statute at 42 CFR 435.119 says 133%, and a five-percentage-point disregard at 42 CFR 435.603 is what turns it into the 138% everyone quotes. Whether it applies to you at all is a matter of state politics rather than federal law: KFF's expansion tracker counts 41 states including the District of Columbia as having adopted expansion and 10 as not, which is why the page asks. Between 100% and 250% sit the cost-sharing reductions, a separate benefit from the premium tax credit that only works on a Silver plan. They lower the deductible, the copays and the out-of-pocket maximum rather than the premium. For 2026, CMS set the reduced out-of-pocket limit at $3,500 from 100% to 200% of the poverty line and $8,450 above 200% up to 250%, against a standard limit of $10,600 for self-only coverage. This is why a Silver plan can be the better buy for a household in that range even when a Bronze plan looks cheaper on premium alone. At 400% sits the credit cliff, $106,600 for the example household. One line is deliberately absent. CHIP, the children's health programme, has no national threshold: every state sets its own and they differ widely, with many covering children well above the adult Medicaid line. No single figure would be true for your family, so the page names none and points you at your state instead.
The 400% cliff, and why it is back
From 2021 through 2025, temporary legislation removed the cap on who could receive a premium tax credit and limited what any household paid for the benchmark plan to 8.5% of income. Under that regime there was no cliff: the credit tapered smoothly and simply ran out when the benchmark premium fell below the household's expected contribution. Those enhanced credits expired after 2025 and no extension has been enacted, so for plan years 2026 and 2027 the pre-2021 structure is back, including the hard cut-off at 400% of the poverty line. The word cliff is accurate and matters. Below the line the credit tapers: the household is expected to pay a rising percentage of income towards the benchmark Silver plan, reaching 9.96% for 2026, and the credit is whatever the benchmark costs above that. Above the line the credit is not smaller, it is zero. For the example household of three the line sits at $106,600 of income. A household at $106,500 may receive a substantial credit; the same household at $106,700 receives nothing at all and pays the full premium. The practical consequences are worth thinking about before the year ends rather than after. Income that crosses the line late in the year does the damage: a bonus, a Roth conversion, a capital gain from selling shares, or a spouse returning to work. Each of those is often controllable in timing, and moving one across a year boundary can be worth more than the amount itself. It also means that for households near the line, a deduction that reduces modified adjusted gross income, such as a contribution to a traditional retirement account or a health savings account, can be worth far more than the tax it saves, because it can restore an entire year's credit. This page shows how far you are from the cliff. What the credit is actually worth, and what happens if the year ends on the wrong side of it after you have already taken an advance, are the subjects of the ACA subsidy and premium tax credit repayment pages.
Frequently asked questions
What percentage of the federal poverty level is my income?
Divide your household income by the poverty line for your household size. On this page's example, a household of 3 with $48,000 of income for plan year 2026 is measured against a poverty line of $26,650, which comes to 180%. That $26,650 is the 2025 guideline for three people, because a 2026 plan year uses the guidelines published the year before.
What is 138% of the federal poverty level?
For a household of 3 on the guidelines a 2026 plan year uses, it is $36,777. That is the line most people mean by the Medicaid limit in a state that expanded the programme. The statute at 42 CFR 435.119 actually says 133%, and a 5-percentage-point disregard at 42 CFR 435.603 is what turns it into the 138% everybody quotes.
Why does a 2026 plan year use the 2025 poverty guidelines?
Because open enrollment for a plan year opens before the new guidelines exist. HHS publishes them each January, well after people have chosen a plan for the year that has already begun, so the rules fix the plan year to the guidelines in effect when enrollment opened. Plan year 2026 therefore runs on the 2025 figures and plan year 2027 on the 2026 ones. It is the single most common reason a figure on this page differs from a guideline table someone found elsewhere.
Is the 400% subsidy cliff back for 2026?
Yes. The enhanced credits that removed the cliff expired after 2025 and no extension has been enacted, so above 400% of the poverty line there is no premium tax credit at all. For the household of 3 in the example that line sits at $106,600. It is a cliff rather than a taper: at $106,599 a credit may be available and at $106,601 it is zero, which is why income near that line is worth watching closely.
Do Alaska and Hawaii use different poverty guidelines?
They do, and they are meaningfully higher. On the 2026 guidelines Alaska starts at $19,950 for one person and adds $7,100 for each extra person, and Hawaii starts at $18,360 and adds $6,530, against $15,960 and $5,680 in the other 48 states and the District of Columbia. This page uses the 48-state figures, so if you live in Alaska or Hawaii your percentage will be lower than it shows.
What about CHIP, the children's health programme?
CHIP is the one line this page deliberately does not draw. Each state sets its own upper income limit for children's coverage and they differ a great deal, so no national figure would be true for your family. Many children qualify for CHIP at incomes well above the adult Medicaid line, which is why it is worth applying through your state even when the adult answer here is no.
What changes for plan year 2027?
The guidelines move up a year, to the 2026 figures. Running the page for a single person on plan year 2027 gives a poverty line of $15,960, so the same $48,000 of income comes to 301% rather than 180%, the Medicaid line sits at $22,025 and the 400% cliff at $63,840. Household size moves the lines far more than the year does.