Roth IRA Calculator

This Roth IRA calculator answers the question most Roth calculators skip: how much are you allowed to put in? It applies the 2026 income limits for your filing status, using the IRS worksheet’s own rounding, works out your MAGI from your AGI if you need it to, then projects what the account could grow to and the year its earnings become tax-free.

About the Roth IRA calculator

A Roth IRA is simple on paper. You put in money you’ve already paid tax on, it grows, and qualified withdrawals come out tax-free. The catch is the income limit. Above a certain MAGI your contribution shrinks, and above the top of the range it disappears. The calculator widget on the top-ranked page, which several banks use, says outright that it assumes your income doesn’t limit you, and another page we read still used 2024 limits.

• Your real 2026 limit. $7,500, or $8,600 at 50 or older, reduced by the phase-out for your filing status, capped at your earned income, and less any traditional IRA contributions.
• MAGI from your AGI. Not sure of your modified adjusted gross income? Switch to the worksheet and add the Roth add-backs to your AGI.
• The projection. Your balance at retirement, in today’s dollars too, with every year in a table.
• The tax-free date. The year your earnings can come out tax-free, from the five-year rule and age 59.5.
• Roth or traditional. What the same take-home cost would leave you after tax in each.

How to use the Roth IRA calculator

1. Enter your filing status, age and MAGI. Use your age at the end of 2026: turning 50 any time in the year gives you the catch-up. If you don’t know your MAGI, pick “Work it out from my AGI”.
2. Check the extras. Under “Earned income and other IRA contributions”, enter your taxable compensation and anything you’ve already put in a traditional IRA for 2026.
3. Add your account. Your current Roth IRA balance, a yearly amount or “the most I’m allowed”, your retirement age and an expected return.
4. Read the result. Your 2026 limit, the balance at retirement, how much of it is growth, and when the earnings become tax-free. Open “Year by year” for the full table.

2026 Roth IRA contribution limits and income ranges

The contribution limit for 2026 is $7,500, or $8,600 if you’re 50 or older by the end of the year, thanks to a $1,100 catch-up. It’s one limit for all your IRAs together, traditional and Roth, and it can’t be more than your taxable compensation.

How much of it you can put in a Roth depends on your modified adjusted gross income:

Head of household uses the single range, not the joint one. That’s easy to get wrong: one widely used calculator widget we checked lists it alongside married filing jointly.

You have until the tax filing deadline to contribute for a year: 15 April 2027 for 2026.

How to calculate your Roth IRA contribution

If your MAGI is inside the range, here’s how to calculate a Roth IRA contribution the way the IRS worksheet in Publication 590-A does it:

1. How far into the range are you? (MAGI – bottom of the range) ÷ width of the range, as a decimal to three places.
2. Take that share off your limit. Limit × that decimal, subtracted from the limit. Use your compensation instead of the limit if it’s lower.
3. Round up to the next $10.
4. If the answer is above $0 but under $200, raise it to $200.
5. Subtract any traditional IRA contributions for the year, if they leave less room than that.

Worked examples

• Single, age 35, MAGI $160,000. $7,000 into a $15,000 range: 0.467. $7,500 × 0.467 = $3,502.50, and $7,500 – $3,502.50 = $3,997.50, which rounds up to $4,000.
• Married filing jointly, age 52, MAGI $249,000. $7,000 into a $10,000 range: 0.7. The limit with catch-up is $8,600, and $8,600 × 0.7 = $6,020 comes off, leaving $2,580.
• Single, MAGI $167,500. 0.967 of the way: $7,500 – $7,252.50 = $247.50, rounded up to $250.
• Single, MAGI $167,900. 0.993 of the way leaves $52.50, which rounds to $60 and is then raised to the $200 minimum.

A head of household with $160,000 of MAGI gets the same $4,000 as a single filer. A married couple filing jointly at $160,000 can each put in the full $7,500.

How to calculate MAGI for a Roth IRA

MAGI isn’t on your tax return. For a Roth IRA, you calculate modified adjusted gross income like this:

1. Start with your AGI, line 11 of Form 1040.
2. Add back any traditional IRA deduction, the student loan interest deduction, and income excluded as foreign earned income or housing, as savings bond interest used for education, or as employer adoption benefits.
3. Subtract any income from converting a traditional IRA or workplace plan to a Roth. A conversion doesn’t stop you contributing in the same year.

An example: AGI of $148,000, a $2,500 student loan interest deduction, and $4,000 of savings bond interest excluded for education. MAGI is $148,000 + $2,500 + $4,000 = $154,500. For a single filer that’s 0.1 of the way through the range, so the limit is $7,500 – $750 = $6,750, not the full amount their AGI alone would suggest.

That’s how MAGI is calculated for a Roth IRA specifically. Other rules, such as Medicare premiums and the health insurance credit, add back different things. Our guide on how to calculate MAGI works one household through every version.

How much will my Roth IRA be worth?

This part of the calculator answers that. With the default example, a 30-year-old with $10,000 in a Roth IRA who adds $7,500 at the start of every year until 65, at 7% a year, ends up with about $1,216,117. That’s $432,188 in today’s dollars at 3% inflation. Of it, $272,500 went in; the rest is growth, and none of it is taxed when it comes out as a qualified withdrawal.

From nothing, $7,500 a year at 7%:

Choose “The most I’m allowed” and the calculator puts in each year’s limit, including the catch-up from 50. For the same 30-year-old, that’s $279,000 of contributions and about $1,245,694 at 65.

The projection holds the 2026 limits and income ranges steady. In reality both rise with inflation, so if your income keeps pace you’ll probably be able to put in more than this shows.

When Roth IRA earnings become tax-free

There are two kinds of money in a Roth IRA, and they follow different rules:

• Your contributions can come out at any time, for any reason, with no tax or penalty.
• The earnings come out tax-free once both of these are true: you’re 59.5 or older, and five tax years have passed since 1 January of the year you first contributed to any Roth IRA.

The five-year clock starts on 1 January of your first contribution year, even if you contributed in April of the next year for that tax year. A 30-year-old making a first contribution for 2026 meets the five-year rule from 2031, but must wait for 59.5, in 2055 at the earliest. A 58-year-old making the same first contribution waits for the five-year rule: earnings are tax-free from 2031.

Earnings taken out early are usually taxed and hit with a 10% penalty, with exceptions such as up to $10,000 for a first home, disability and death. Withdrawals come out in a set order: contributions first, then conversions, then earnings.

Roth or traditional IRA?

It comes down to your tax rate now against your tax rate in retirement. A traditional IRA deduction saves tax today; a Roth saves it later. For the same take-home cost:

• Higher rate in retirement: the Roth wins. At 12% now and 22% later, the default contributions grow to $1,109,351 in the Roth, against about $983,288 after tax from a traditional IRA.
• Lower rate in retirement: the traditional IRA wins. At 24% now and 12% later, it leaves about $1,284,512.
• The same rate: they come out exactly the same.

Two things tip it toward a Roth that the arithmetic doesn’t show. Roth IRAs have no required minimum distributions for the original owner, and Roth withdrawals don’t count toward the income that makes Social Security taxable. A traditional IRA deduction can also be limited if you or your spouse have a workplace retirement plan.

Over the income limit, or over the contribution limit

Above the range, you can’t contribute to a Roth directly. Many people make a non-deductible traditional IRA contribution and convert it, the so-called backdoor Roth. If you have other pre-tax money in traditional, SEP or SIMPLE IRAs, the pro-rata rule makes part of the conversion taxable, so check before you do it.

Over the contribution limit, the excess is taxed 6% for every year it stays in. Take out the excess and anything it earned before your filing deadline, including extensions, and the 6% doesn’t apply. If you plan more than you’re allowed, the calculator warns you and projects your limit instead.

Comparing Roth IRA calculators

Whichever IRA calculator for a Roth you use, whether that’s the Bankrate Roth IRA calculator, the NerdWallet Roth IRA calculator or this one, three settings explain most of the gaps between their answers:

• The year of the limits. $7,500 for 2026, up from $7,000. A calculator still on older limits will under-count.
• Whether it applies the income phase-out. If it doesn’t, its answer only holds below $153,000 single or $242,000 joint.
• When contributions go in. At the start of each year, as here, they get a full year of growth; at the end, they don’t. Over 30 years at 7%, that alone is a 7% difference.

FreeToolBank isn’t affiliated with Bankrate or NerdWallet, and their names are used only to describe what to compare.

What the calculator assumes

• A steady return every year, compounded once a year. Real markets go up and down, and the order of good and bad years matters.
• Contributions at the start of each year, from now until the year before you retire.
• 2026 limits and income ranges every year, with your income as it is now.
• All withdrawals are qualified, so the Roth balance is tax-free.
• The traditional comparison assumes the full deduction is available.

It doesn’t cover Roth 401(k) plans, which have their own, higher limits, or state taxes. It’s an estimate, not tax or investment advice.

Sources

• IRS, Publication 590-A, Contributions to Individual Retirement Arrangements: Worksheet 2-2 for the reduced Roth limit, and the MAGI worksheet.
• IRS, Publication 590-B, Distributions from Individual Retirement Arrangements: qualified distributions, the five-year rule and the ordering rules.
• IRS, 2026 retirement plan and IRA limits: $7,500 contribution limit, $1,100 catch-up and the Roth phase-out ranges.
• Internal Revenue Code section 4973: the 6% tax on excess contributions.

Checked 9 November 2026. Limits change every year; we update this calculator when the IRS announces the next year’s figures.