Estimate Your Social Security Benefits

Use this Social Security benefits calculator to estimate your retirement benefits based on your age, earnings and retirement date. Calculating your Social Security retirement benefit — a crucial source of income for many retirees — can be an important step in choosing when to retire (signing up for and choosing a Medicare plan is another).

Most people first become eligible to collect Social Security retirement benefits at age 62. However, if you wait, your future monthly retirement benefit increases each month until you turn 70. In some cases, the amount you’d receive at 70 is nearly double the amount you’d receive at 62.

How to use this Social Security calculator

1. Enter your date of birth. The Social Security Administration uses your date of birth to determine when you're eligible for 100% of your retirement benefits, among other things.

2. Enter the age at which you'd like to start taking your Social Security retirement benefits. How much your Social Security retirement check is depends in part upon when you decide to retire.

3. Enter your current annual income. This helps us estimate your past and future earnings.

4. Enter an estimate of your future annual salary to increases. This helps us estimate what you might earn between now and when you decide to retire.

How the Social Security calculator works

Three things greatly influence the size of your Social Security retirement benefits: your highest 35 years of earnings, when you were born and when you decide to start taking benefits. This Social Security benefits calculator accounts for those three things.

The math to calculate Social Security retirement benefits is complex, and the calculator also incorporates the following data from the Social Security Administration:

• The average wage index (AWI) series, which tracks average wages in the United States and annual changes in those average wages. We use the 2024 Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance (OASDI) Trustees Report's AWI projections till year 2100.

• The annual wage base, which reflects the maximum amount of a person's wages subject to Social Security taxes in a given year.

• The SSA's annual cost-of-living adjustments.

• The bend points the SSA applies to a person's average indexed monthly earnings.

• Full retirement age by birth year, as set by the SSA.

• The set percentages by which the SSA decreases or increases a person's benefits depending on their birth year and when they apply for retirement benefits.