Inflation Calculator

How to use the inflation calculator

1. Choose the Country (price index): Canada (CPI, Statistics Canada) or United States (CPI-U, BLS). Amounts are shown in Canadian or US dollars accordingly.
2. Enter the Amount, for example a salary, a price or a savings balance.
3. Pick the From year (when the money was earned or spent) and the To year (the year you want to express it in). Swap years exchanges them, so you can also go back in time: what would today’s rent have been worth in 1990?

The tool shows the Equivalent value, the Cumulative inflation and the Average annual inflation between the two years, the Purchasing power change of money from the earlier year, and the CPI of each year. The chart and the Year by year table show what the amount is worth in each year of the period, with the inflation of each year; Download CSV exports the table. How it was calculated details every step.

How the calculation works

A consumer price index (CPI) measures the cost of a fixed basket of goods and services compared with a base period. The equivalent value simply scales the amount by the ratio of the two indexes:

Equivalent value = amount × CPI(to year) ÷ CPI(from year)

Cumulative inflation = CPI(later year) ÷ CPI(earlier year) − 1

Average annual inflation = (CPI(later) ÷ CPI(earlier))^(1 ÷ years) − 1

Example for Canada: the annual average CPI was 95.4 in 2000 and 164.2 in 2025 (2002 = 100). $100 in 2000 is therefore worth 100 × 164.2 ÷ 95.4 = $172.12 in 2025: prices rose 72.12% in total, about 2.20% a year on average, and a dollar from 2000 buys 41.90% less. In the United States, CPI-U went from 172.2 to 321.943 over the same years: $100 becomes $186.96, about 2.53% a year.

The data

• Canada: Statistics Canada, Table 18-10-0005-01, Consumer Price Index, annual average, not seasonally adjusted, all-items (2002 = 100), from 1914. Adapted from Statistics Canada under the Statistics Canada Open Licence; this does not constitute an endorsement by Statistics Canada of this product.
• United States: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, CPI for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U), U.S. city average, all items, annual average (1982–84 = 100), series CUUR0000SA0, from 1913. BLS did not collect October 2025 prices because of the 2025 federal funding lapse; the 2025 figure is the annual average BLS published.

Values are copied unchanged from the official releases and run through the latest complete year; the index for the current year is added once its annual average is published, in January. The source line below the tool gives the retrieval date.

Limits of CPI comparisons

• The CPI tracks an average household basket. Your own inflation can differ a lot depending on where you live and what you buy (rent, fuel, food, tuition).
• Annual averages smooth the year: comparing January prices with December prices would give slightly different results.
• Baskets change over time, and quality improvements are only partly captured, so comparisons over many decades are rough.
• Indexes are rounded (one decimal in Canada), which matters only for very short periods.

The results are estimates for information, not financial advice.