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401(k) Growth Calculator

↻ Updated 2026

Project your 401(k) balance at retirement — including your contributions, employer match and compounded returns — using the 2026 IRS contribution limits.

Educational calculators — always consult a licensed professional before making financial decisions.

Your inputs

Current age

Retirement age

Current 401(k) balance

Annual salary

Your contribution

Cap: $24,500 ($32,500 at 50+)

Employer match

of your contribution, up to 6% of salary

Match limit (% of salary)

Annual salary growth

Expected annual return

Balance at 65

$2,382,772

in 35 years

Employer match

$145,109

free money added

Investment growth

$1,728,967

compounded returns

401(k) growth to retirementtarget age 65

age 30age 65

What builds your balance

Starting balance$25,000

Your contributions$483,697

Employer match$145,109

Growth$1,728,967

ASSUMPTIONS — Contributions are capped at the 2026 IRS elective-deferral limit of $24,500 ($32,500 with the age-50 catch-up). Returns are assumed constant and pre-tax; withdrawals in retirement are taxed as ordinary income. Employer match assumes you stay employed and vested.

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How to read your 401(k) projection

The headline balance is what your account holds at retirement before any tax comes out — a traditional 401(k) is money you own with the IRS as a silent partner. The three numbers underneath it matter more than the total: what you put in, what your employer added, and what compounding did with both.

Watch the split. At the defaults, contributions and match together are about $629,000 of a $2.38M balance — the other $1.73M is growth. Time is doing most of the work, not thrift.

The match slider is the highest-leverage input on the page. Set the employer match to 0% and the final balance drops by $488,275 — see the employer match calculator for why the first few percent of pay behave differently from the rest.

The return here is nominal, not real. A 7% return with 3% inflation buys what about 3.9% would today — the $2.38M is 2061 dollars, not 2026 dollars.

How your 401(k) balance at retirement is projected

Each year the model does four things in order: works out what you contribute, works out what your employer adds, grows the whole account by your expected return, and gives you a raise. It repeats that until you hit your retirement age.

The one subtlety is when money earns. Your existing balance compounds for the full year, but the year's contributions are credited half a year of growth — a mid-year approximation, since real contributions arrive with every paycheck rather than in one January lump.

cap = 24,500 + (8,000 if age ≥ 50) my contribution = min(contribution % × salary, cap) employer match = min(contribution %, match limit) × salary × match % repeat each year until retirement age: balance = balance × (1 + return) + (my contribution + employer match) × (1 + return ÷ 2) salary = salary × (1 + salary growth)

cap: The 2026 IRS elective-deferral limit on your own contributions — $24,500, rising to $32,500 from the year you turn 50 (IRS Notice 2025-67)
contribution %: The share of each paycheck you defer into the plan — applied to that year's salary, then capped
salary: Your gross annual pay, before tax — grows by the salary-growth rate every year of the projection
match %: Cents your employer adds per dollar you contribute — 50% means 50 cents on the dollar — the most common formula
match limit: The share of salary your employer will match up to — contribute above it and the extra is unmatched
return: Expected annual investment return, nominal — inflation is not removed — see the FAQ on what rate to use
salary growth: Annual raise, compounded — raises your contribution and match every year, since both are percentages of pay
balance: The account value, carried forward year to year — pre-tax — withdrawals from a traditional 401(k) are taxed as ordinary income

Two things the cap does not do. It never limits your employer's match, because the $24,500 elective-deferral limit only covers your own deferrals — the separate combined limit that does cover both isn't modelled here. And it rarely binds at ordinary salaries: at the defaults, 10% of a salary growing 3% a year reaches only $14,449 by age 50, well under the $32,500 cap. If you want the raw compounding without the plan rules, the compound interest calculator uses the same engine.

Worked examples

Example: a 30-year-old earning $80,000 and contributing 10%

The calculator's defaults, so you can follow along on the page. A $25,000 starting balance, a 50% match on the first 6% of pay, 3% raises and a 7% return, run to age 65.

Year 1 contribution10% of $80,000 — well under the $24,500 cap	$8,000
Year 1 employer match50% × 6% of $80,000 — the match limit binds, not your 10%	$2,400
Year 1 balance$25,000 × 1.07 + $10,400 × 1.035	$37,514
Your contributions, 35 yearsrising with each 3% raise	$483,697
Employer match, 35 yearscapped at 3% of pay every year	$145,109
Investment growth73% of the final balance	$1,728,967
Balance at 65before any tax on withdrawal	$2,382,772

$2.38M at 65, of which $1.73M was never earned or contributed by anyone — it's compounding on 35 years of deposits. Note that contributing 10% while the match stops at 6% means four percentage points of pay go in unmatched. That's not wasted; it just doesn't earn the instant 50%.

Example: the same person contributes 6% instead of 10%

Everything else identical — same salary, same match formula, same return. The only change is dialling your contribution down to exactly the match limit, the level often described as "getting the free money and stopping".

Your contributions, 35 yearsdown $193,479	$290,218
Employer match, 35 yearsunchanged — you still capture every cent	$145,109
Balance at 65down $651,033	$1,731,739
Cost per dollar of balance$193,479 of contributions bought $651,033	$0.30

Capturing the full match costs 6% of pay; the four points above it still turned $193,479 into $651,033 over 35 years. The match is the better deal per dollar — a guaranteed 50% before markets do anything — but it caps out at 3% of salary, and the arithmetic above that point is just time.

Frequently asked questions

How much should I contribute to my 401(k)?

There's a widely-repeated benchmark of 10–15% of gross pay including the employer match, promoted by Fidelity, Schwab and most large recordkeepers. The 2026 ceiling is a harder number: $24,500 of your own deferrals, or $32,500 from the year you turn 50 (IRS Notice 2025-67). Between those two figures is where the decision actually lives.

The calculator's default of 10% on $80,000 is $8,000 — a third of the way to the cap. Drag the slider and watch the split between "your contributions" and "growth": the earlier a dollar goes in, the smaller the share of the final balance it needs to be. Whether 10% or 15% fits your budget is a question the tool can't see; what it can show is the 35-year price of the difference. On these defaults it's $813,499 between 10% and 15%. If you'd rather work backwards from a target, the retirement number calculator starts from the income you want.

What return should I assume for my 401(k)?

The field is nominal — inflation is not stripped out — and the default is 7%. That's roughly the long-run US equity return before inflation, and it's the assumption baked into most retirement projections you'll see. Recordkeeper guidance generally lands at 5–8% nominal for a diversified mix, drifting lower as the bond share rises.

The trap is forgetting what 7% for 35 years does to the units. The $2.38M is in 2061 dollars. At 3% inflation it buys roughly what $846,000 buys today — still a lot, but not the number your brain hears. Either keep the nominal return and remember the answer is inflated, or enter a real return (7% nominal minus 3% inflation ≈ 3.9%) and read the answer in today's money. What you cannot do is enter 7% and treat the output as today's dollars.

Is a 401(k) alone enough to retire on?

It depends entirely on what you spend, which is the one input this calculator never asks for. A $2.38M balance sounds decisive; at a 4% withdrawal rate it funds about $95,000 a year before tax, in 2061 dollars.

Two things the projection quietly assumes: that you stay at one employer collecting that match for 35 straight years, and that the balance is all yours. It isn't — a traditional 401(k) is taxed as ordinary income on the way out, so the spendable figure is lower than the headline. Most people's retirement income also arrives from more than one place: Social Security, taxable savings, an IRA. The Social Security estimator covers the piece this tool ignores entirely.

What is the 401(k) catch-up contribution for 2026?

$8,000 on top of the $24,500 base limit from the year you turn 50, taking you to $32,500 (IRS Notice 2025-67). There's also a larger catch-up of $11,250 for ages 60 to 63, available only if your plan offers it — this calculator applies the standard age-50 catch-up and does not model the 60-63 band.

One change landed in 2026 that the calculator doesn't reflect either: under SECURE 2.0 §603, employees whose prior-year FICA wages exceeded an indexed threshold must make catch-up contributions on a Roth basis rather than pre-tax. If that applies to you, the catch-up dollars are after-tax going in and tax-free coming out — which changes the tax story, not the balance this page projects.

What this 401(k) calculator leaves out

The projection answers one question — how big does the account get — and takes a straight line to get there. Several things that decide what the balance is actually worth sit outside the model.

Every dollar is pre-tax — The balance is the account value, not your money. Traditional 401(k) withdrawals are taxed as ordinary income, so a $2.38M balance is $2.38M minus a lifetime of future tax at rates nobody knows yet. Roth 401(k) contributions would make the same balance genuinely tax-free — the model doesn't distinguish.
Nominal returns, nominal answer — A 7% return with no inflation adjustment means the output is in future dollars. Thirty-five years of 3% inflation cuts purchasing power by about 64%. The chart's rightmost bar is not comparable to your salary today.
The combined contribution limit — Only your own deferrals are capped, at $24,500. The separate 415(c) limit covering your contributions plus your employer's — $72,000 for 2026 — is in our data module but isn't applied here. It binds only at high contribution rates with a generous match.
Vesting and job changes — The match total assumes you stay employed and fully vested for every year of the projection. Employer contributions commonly vest over three to six years (IRS Topic — Retirement Topics: Vesting), and leaving early can forfeit the unvested part.
A constant return, every year — Markets don't deliver 7% annually; they deliver something else annually and average out. For an account you're still adding to, that volatility is survivable and the average is a fair planning tool. It stops being fair the moment you start withdrawing.