Social Security Benefit Estimator
Your earnings record, in summary
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
- Long-range scenario, not a guarantee. Small changes in returns, inflation, fees, taxes, and withdrawal timing can materially change the result.
- 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 average annual earnings across your working life, in today's dollars. SSA restates every past year of pay in current wages before averaging it, so a career average in today's money is the right figure to give — not the salary that appeared on a 1998 W-2.
- 02
Enter the years you have worked, or expect to work, in Social Security–covered jobs. This is the field people underestimate the importance of: the average is taken over 35 years whatever you enter, so 32 years means three of them are zeros.
- 03
If your SSA statement already gives you an average indexed monthly earnings figure, put it in the third box. It takes over completely and the two boxes above it are ignored, along with the two stats about zero years and an extra year of work.
- 04
Check the statutory row underneath: 35 years averaged, the $184,500 taxable maximum, the $1,286 and $7,749 bend points, and a full retirement age of 67 for anyone born in 1960 or later. Every one is an editable field because every one moves — and the bend points are fixed by the year you turn 62, not the year you claim.
- 05
Read the monthly benefit, then the table beneath it: the three bands of the formula, how much of your earnings falls in each, and what each band adds. The two stats beside it price what the years short of 35 cost you and what one more year of work would add.
Formula
AIME = min(career-average earnings, the $184,500 taxable maximum) × min(years worked, 35) ÷ (35 × 12). Note the divisor: it is always 420 months, never the months you actually worked, which is what turns the years short of 35 into zeros. PIA = 90% of the first $1,286 of AIME + 32% of the part between $1,286 and $7,749 + 15% of anything above $7,749. That is the benefit at full retirement age. Claiming early cuts it by 5/9 of 1% (0.5556%) for each of the first 36 months and 5/12 of 1% (0.4167%) for every month beyond, so 60 months early is a 30.0% cut. Claiming late adds a delayed retirement credit of 8% a year, stopping at 70.
Example
A $68,000 career average in today's dollars, 32 years of covered work, and the 2026 formula. The salary is under the $184,500 ceiling, so all of it counts: $68,000 × 32 ÷ 420 gives an AIME of $5,181. The first $1,286 of that is replaced at 90% — $1,157. The next $3,895, up to the second bend point, is replaced at 32% — $1,246. Nothing reaches the $7,749 bend point, so the 15% band adds nothing. The benefit at full retirement age is $2,404 a month, $28,845 a year, and 42% of the career-average pay it was built on. The three empty years cost $155 a month of that, and one more year at $68,000 would add $52 a month, or $622 a year for life. The same record pays $1,683 at 62 and $2,981 at 70.
Definitions
- Average indexed monthly earnings (AIME)
- Your highest 35 years of earnings, each restated in today's wages, added up and divided by 420 months. The years you did not work count as zeros in that average, not as absent from it.
- Primary insurance amount (PIA)
- The benefit your record buys at full retirement age, before any adjustment for claiming early or late. Every other Social Security benefit — spousal, survivor, children's — is defined as a share of it.
- Bend points
- The two AIME thresholds where the replacement rate steps down from 90% to 32% and from 32% to 15%. Set by the year you turn 62 and fixed for life; $1,286 and $7,749 for a worker attaining 62 in 2026.
Good to know
From forty years of paychecks to one monthly number
Almost nobody knows how their own Social Security benefit is worked out, and the reason is that the interesting step is invisible. It runs in three stages. First, indexing: SSA takes every year you ever earned and restates it in current wages, using the national average wage index through the year you turn 60. A $22,000 salary from 1990 is not compared with a $68,000 salary from today at face value — it is scaled up to what that same position in the wage distribution is worth now. That is why a career average "in today's dollars" is the honest thing to ask for, and why the salary you actually remember earning is the wrong figure to type. Second, the top 35: those indexed years are ranked, the highest 35 are added together, and the total is divided by 420 months. The result is your average indexed monthly earnings, or AIME, and on a $68,000 career average across 32 years of covered work it comes to $5,181. Third, the benefit formula, which is where the money is decided. Indexing stops at 60 — there is no more of it after that, which is one of the quieter reasons a career-average figure is stable enough to use — and after you claim, the benefit rises instead with the annual cost-of-living adjustment, 2.8% for 2026. The whole chain is arithmetic with no discretion anywhere in it, which is what makes an estimate from a summary worth having even though it is not a statement.
Three bands, and why the formula is progressive
The benefit formula has not changed since 1979. It takes your AIME and cuts it into three slices at two thresholds called bend points, then replaces each slice at a different rate: 90% of the first slice, 32% of the second, 15% of the third. For 2026 the bend points are $1,286 and $7,749. Follow the default figures through it: an AIME of $5,181 puts $1,286 in the first band, which pays $1,157; the remaining $3,895 falls in the second band, which pays $1,246; nothing reaches the third band at all. Add them and the benefit at full retirement age is $2,404 a month, $28,845 a year. What that structure does is replace a far larger share of a small income than of a large one. On $68,000 of career-average pay, $28,845 a year is a 42% replacement rate; double the pay and the extra earnings are replaced at 32% and then 15%, so the benefit rises by nowhere near double. Two facts about the bend points are worth holding onto because both surprise people. They are fixed by the year you turn 62 — your year of first eligibility — and not by the year you claim or retire, so waiting to 70 does not get you a later, larger pair. And they are indexed to wages rather than prices, which is why they move by around 4.9% in a year when the cost-of-living adjustment is 2.8%. One caveat this page states in the open: SSA's own bend-point table could not be reached directly when it was built, so $1,286 and $7,749 come from a secondary source and ship as editable fields for exactly that reason.
The thirty-five-year divisor is the part nobody expects
The most expensive misunderstanding about Social Security is that a short career means a shorter average. It does not. The divisor is always 420 months, whatever your record contains, so the years you did not work are not omitted from the average — they are counted as zeros in it. With 32 years of covered work against the statutory 35, three zeros sit in the calculation and pull the benefit down by $155 a month on the default figures, for the rest of your life. That single fact reverses the usual intuition about working longer. A year of work added to a record that is short of 35 does not have to beat anything: it replaces a zero. On the same figures one more year at $68,000 adds $52 a month, or $622 a year, permanently — a return on one year of work that is very hard to match anywhere else. Once you are past 35 years the arithmetic changes entirely, because a new year now has to displace the lowest year already counted rather than a zero, and it only helps by the difference between the two. This page cannot show you that, because it holds one salary figure for your whole career and a year at your average wage cannot beat your average wage; in a real record it usually can, since the year being displaced is an early one at a fraction of today's indexed pay. There is also a floor under all of this: you need 40 credits, four a year and so about ten years of covered work, to be insured for a retirement benefit at all. Credits never expire, so years worked decades ago still count however long the gap since.
What this estimate cannot know, and what to check
The honest limitation is the input. SSA works from 35 separate indexed years and this page works from one average, so a career with a few very high years and several very low ones lands somewhere different from a flat average of the same total — usually higher, because the top-35 rule discards the worst years and a flat average does not. If your statement gives you an AIME, put it in the third box: it takes over completely, and the two figures about zero years and an extra year of work are then hidden, because a statement's AIME already has your real record inside it and this page has no way to take a year out or put one in. The second limitation is the ceiling. Earnings above the taxable maximum, $184,500 for 2026, are neither taxed for Social Security nor counted toward the benefit, so a $400,000 earner and a $184,500 earner build identical records and retire on identical checks. That is the design working as intended rather than a defect, but it means a high salary typed in without the ceiling in place reads as a much larger benefit than any record could pay. Third, a rule that recently stopped applying: a pension from work not covered by Social Security used to cut this benefit, and any spousal or survivor benefit alongside it, under the Windfall Elimination Provision and the Government Pension Offset. The Social Security Fairness Act repealed both, so a teacher, firefighter or federal employee under an older non-covered system is no longer reduced for it — worth confirming against your own award notice. Finally, pull your actual record from ssa.gov/myaccount and read it for gaps. An employer that never reported a year of your wages leaves a hole only you can spot, and the correction is worth more than any refinement of the estimate.
Frequently asked questions
How is a Social Security benefit actually calculated?
In three steps, and the middle one is the one nobody sees. First, every year you ever earned is indexed to national average wages through the year you turn 60, so old salaries are restated in today's money. Second, the highest 35 of those indexed years are added up and divided by 420 months — that is your average indexed monthly earnings, or AIME. Third, the AIME runs through a three-band formula: 90% of the first $1,286, 32% of everything between $1,286 and $7,749, and 15% of anything above. On a $68,000 career average across 32 years, the AIME is $5,181 and the benefit is $2,404 a month.
What are the bend points, and which year's do I use?
They are the two thresholds where the replacement rate steps down — $1,286 and $7,749 for 2026 — and they are fixed by the year you turn 62, not the year you claim or the year you retire. Whoever turns 62 in 2026 uses this pair for the rest of their life; someone turning 62 next year gets a different one, and waiting to claim does not move them. Both figures are editable fields on this page because SSA's own bend-point table could not be reached directly when this page was built, so they come from a secondary source and should be re-checked each January.
What happens if I have not worked 35 years?
The missing years are not skipped, they are filled with zeros. That is the single most expensive misunderstanding on this page. With 32 years of covered work against a 35-year averaging period, three zeros sit in the average and pull the benefit down by $155 a month, every month, for life. It also means any year of covered work you add, at any wage at all, replaces a zero rather than competing with a real year: on the default figures one more year adds $52 a month, or $622 a year, permanently.
Does a bigger salary always buy a bigger benefit?
Only up to a point, and then twice. Earnings above the $184,500 taxable maximum are neither taxed for Social Security nor counted toward the benefit, so a $400,000 earner and a $184,500 earner build the same record. Below that ceiling the formula is progressive by design: the first $1,286 of monthly earnings is replaced at 90%, the next band at 32% and anything past $7,749 at 15%. A career average twice as large does not buy a benefit twice as large — on $68,000 the benefit replaces 42% of career pay, and the share falls as pay rises.
Should I claim at 62, at 67 or at 70?
That is a different question and this page deliberately stops short of it. What it gives you is the input: the same $68,000 record pays $1,683 a month at 62, $2,404 at full retirement age and $2,981 at 70, because the formula is fixed and only the claiming age moves it. Which to take turns on your health, on whether you are still working, on a spouse's record and on what the household needs after the first death — take the full-retirement-age figure across to the Social Security calculator, which prices every age against a life expectancy and reports the break-even.
Why does this not match my SSA statement?
Because SSA works from 35 separate indexed years and this page works from one average. A career with a few very high years and several very low ones lands somewhere different from a flat average of the same total, and no summary input can reproduce that. Two other things move the real number: you need 40 credits — four a year, so about ten years of covered work — to be insured at all, and your record may be missing a year an employer never reported, which is a gap only you can spot. Pull the real figures from ssa.gov/myaccount and put the statement's AIME in the third box.