Social Security calculator 2026: see how your benefit is built

Why the year you turn 62 decides your formula

Two neighbors born a year apart, with the same pay all their lives, do not get the same primary insurance amount. The law fixes your formula in the year you become eligible, which for retirement is the year you turn 62, and it indexes your earnings to the national average wage of the year you turned 60. After that, the PIA only moves with cost-of-living adjustments, while the bend points of the following years keep moving with wages. Most online estimators skip this and apply the current bend points to everyone. The table below shows what that hides, for a worker who earned the equivalent of $60,000 of today's pay from 22 to 62.

The person born in 1961 locked in the $1,115 first bend point of 2023 and then received the COLAs of 2023, 2024 and 2025; the person born in 1964 gets the 2026 formula and no COLA yet. The differences are small in this example because wage growth and price growth were close over those years, but they are real money over twenty years of payments, and they are exactly what the SSA computes. The calculator above applies the formula of your own year, read from the official table of bend points since 1979, and the COLAs listed in the SSA series.

The four steps the SSA follows

1. Index each year of earnings

Every year of covered earnings before the year you turn 60 is multiplied by an indexing factor: the average wage index of your 60th year divided by the index of the year worked. In the SSA's 2026 example, $16,196 earned in 1986 becomes $65,307 (factor 4.0323) because average wages were 4.0323 times higher in 2024 than in 1986. Earnings from the year you turn 60 onward count at their face value. Pay above the year's taxable maximum is left out, which is why a high earner's benefit stops growing with salary.

2. Keep the best 35 years

The 35 highest indexed years are added up and divided by 420 months. The result, rounded down to the dollar, is the average indexed monthly earnings (AIME). Years you did not work are not skipped: if you have fewer than 35 years, zeros fill the gap.

3. Apply the PIA formula

The AIME goes through three brackets separated by the bend points: 90% of the first bracket, 32% of the second, 15% of the rest. The weighting is deliberate: a low earner gets back a much larger share of past pay than a high earner. An AIME of $3,000 gives a PIA of $1,705.80, more than half of it; an AIME of $12,000 gives less than a third.

4. Adjust for the age you start

The PIA is what you get at full retirement age. Each month earlier removes 5/9 of 1% for the first 36 months and 5/12 of 1% beyond; each month later, up to 70, adds 2/3 of 1%. For anyone born in 1960 or later, with a full retirement age of 67, starting at 62 keeps 70% of the PIA and waiting to 70 pays 124%.

62, full retirement age or 70: the break-even logic

Starting early means more checks; starting late means bigger checks. The age at which the bigger checks catch up in total is the break-even age. For a full retirement age of 67, starting at 70 instead of 62 catches up around 80 and a half, in today's dollars; equal COLAs do not move that age because they raise both streams by the same percentage. The claiming-age calculator runs the comparison for every start age with your own PIA. Two things weigh more than the break-even for many households: a married higher earner's delay raises the survivor benefit for the spouse who outlives, and working before full retirement age triggers the earnings test.

What changed for 2026

The Federal Register notice of November 3, 2025 set every figure this site uses: a 2.8% COLA effective December 2025, a 2024 average wage index of 69,846.57, bend points of $1,286 and $7,749, a taxable maximum of $184,500, $1,890 per credit and earnings-test limits of $24,480 and $65,160. Medicare's standard Part B premium, usually taken from the check, rose to $202.90 a month (CMS). And since the Social Security Fairness Act, a pension from non-covered public work no longer reduces Social Security.

What this calculator does not do

It does not read your SSA record: either it rebuilds a career from one salary, assuming your pay kept the same rank against the national average every year, or you paste your record into the earnings-record calculator. It does not model disability benefits, the special minimum benefit for long low-wage careers, railroad retirement or foreign totalization agreements. For people who turn 62 after 2026 it gives today's dollars, as the SSA's Quick Calculator does. The method page lists every rule applied and the official examples the engine reproduces.