College Cost Calculator
↻ Updated 2026Project the total future cost of a college education — including tuition inflation — so you know the number you're actually saving toward.
Educational calculators — always consult a licensed professional before making financial decisions.
Runs entirely in your browser — nothing you enter is sent to us.How this works
How to read your projected college cost
On the defaults — $28,000 a year today, enrolling in ten years, four years of study, 5% inflation — the projected total is $196,580.70. The same four years at today's prices would be $112,000. The $84,580.70 gap between them isn't a forecast of college; it's a forecast of the inflation rate you chose, compounded for thirteen years.
How future college costs are projected from today's price
Each year of study is priced separately, then added up. That matters: a four-year degree starting in ten years isn't four years at the year-ten price — it's the year-ten, year-eleven, year-twelve and year-thirteen prices, each inflated from today by its own distance into the future.
So the exponent isn't the same for every term. Study year k is inflated over (years until enrollment + k) years, which is why the bar chart on this page slopes upward across a single degree rather than sitting flat.
cost of study year k = annual cost × (1 + g)^(years until + k) for k = 0, 1, ... (years of study − 1) total = the sum of every study year's cost inflation premium = total − (annual cost × years of study)
- annual cost
- One year's full cost of attendance, at today's prices — the published sticker price, not what a family with aid would pay — see the FAQ on net price
- g
- The education inflation rate you set, as a decimal — an assumption, not our data — the calculator's 5% default is discussed in the FAQ and the limitations below
- years until
- Years from today until the first day of enrollment — 0 to 18 on the slider — 18 is the newborn case
- k
- The index of the study year, counting from zero — k = 0 is freshman year, so it's inflated over exactly "years until" years and no more
- years of study
- How many years of attendance you're funding — 4 by default; 5 and 6 are common in practice, and graduate study extends it further
- total
- The projected gross cost of the whole degree — before any aid, scholarship, or investment growth on money you've saved
- inflation premium
- The projected total minus the same years at today's price — the cost of the delay, isolated
The compounding is annual and applies uniformly to the whole cost of attendance — tuition, fees, housing, food, books. That's a simplification worth naming, because those components don't move together. Published tuition and the housing-and-food component have diverged repeatedly, and a single rate applied to the whole bundle averages over a real difference.
The model also treats the price as continuous, which it isn't. Colleges reset prices once a year, in discrete steps, and the step is announced in the spring. The projection is a smooth curve through a staircase — fine for planning a total, useless for predicting any particular year's bill.
Worked examples
Example: $28,000 a year, starting in 10 years, four years of study
The calculator's defaults at 5% inflation. The $28,000 is close to the 2025-26 average total budget for a public four-year in-state student, which College Board puts at $30,990 including housing and food.
| Year 1 (in 10 yr)$28,000 × 1.05^10 — a 1.63× multiple | $45,609.05 |
| Year 2 (in 11 yr)another 5% on top | $47,889.50 |
| Year 3 (in 12 yr) | $50,283.98 |
| Year 4 (in 13 yr)1.89× today's price | $52,798.18 |
| Projected totalthe four years added up | $196,580.70 |
| Same four years today$28,000 × 4 | $112,000.00 |
| Inflation premium76% on top of today's price, from waiting | $84,580.70 |
The projection nearly doubles the sticker price over thirteen years. Read the last line carefully though: $84,580.70 of the $196,580.70 is the compounding assumption, not the college. Every dollar of that premium is a claim about the future that the tool takes entirely from the inflation slider.
Example: the same school at 3% inflation instead of 5%
Change nothing but the inflation slider, from 5% to 3%. Same $28,000, same ten years, same four years of study. College Board's most recent data — published tuition and fees up 2.9% at public four-year and 4.0% at private nonprofit four-year in 2025-26, against 2.6% general inflation — makes 3% at least as defensible a guess as 5%.
| Year 1 (in 10 yr)vs $45,609.05 at 5% | $37,629.66 |
| Projected totalvs $196,580.70 at 5% | $157,428.46 |
| Inflation premiumvs $84,580.70 at 5% | $45,428.46 |
| Difference in the totalfrom two percentage points | $39,152.24 |
| At 2.5%the slider's step is 0.5, so this is reachable too | $148,835.99 |
Two percentage points move the answer by $39,152.24 — more than a third of what the whole degree costs today. Nothing about the school changed. This is the most important thing this page has to tell you: the projection's precision is entirely borrowed from an input nobody can know, and a figure quoted to the dollar is a figure quoted to a false standard.
Frequently asked questions
How much will college cost in 18 years?
Set the years-until slider to 18 — its maximum, and the newborn case — and hold the other defaults. At $28,000 a year today and 5% inflation, freshman year alone lands at $67,385.34 and four years total $290,439.23. The first-year price has multiplied by 2.41.
The caveat is that an 18-year projection is 18 compounding periods of a number you guessed. Run the same setup at 3% and the total drops to well under $200,000. Widely circulated "half a million dollars for a degree" projections generally assume 6% or more indefinitely — a rate recent data doesn't support, applied over a horizon long enough for the assumption to dominate everything else. The direction is reliable; the digits are not.
What is the average cost of college right now?
College Board's Trends in College Pricing and Student Aid 2025, published in November 2025, puts average total budgets for 2025-26 at $30,990 for a public four-year in-state student, $50,920 for public four-year out-of-state, $65,470 for a private nonprofit four-year, and $21,320 for a public two-year in-district student. Those are full cost-of-attendance figures — tuition, fees, housing, food, books and living costs.
Published tuition and fees alone are much smaller: $11,950 in-state at public four-year institutions and $45,000 at private nonprofit four-year. That gap is the part families miss when they budget from a tuition figure. The calculator's $28,000 default sits just below the public four-year in-state budget; at $65,000 a year with the other defaults, the four-year projection exceeds $450,000.
What is included in a college's cost of attendance?
More than the bill. Cost of attendance is a defined federal figure each school publishes, and under the Higher Education Act it covers tuition and fees, an allowance for housing and food, and allowances for books, course materials, supplies, transportation, and miscellaneous personal expenses — plus, where applicable, a computer, dependent care, disability-related costs, and study abroad.
The distinction that trips families up is billed versus allowed. Tuition, fees and on-campus housing are billed. Transportation, books and personal expenses are allowances — estimates the school includes so the figure reflects what the year actually costs and can size your aid against something real. That's the figure this calculator wants. Enter tuition alone and you'll understate a public four-year year by roughly $19,000.
How much does college tuition increase each year?
Less than it used to, and less than most calculators assume — including the 5% default on this page. College Board reports published tuition and fees rose 2.9% at public four-year in-state institutions and 4.0% at private nonprofit four-year institutions for 2025-26. Against 2.6% general inflation over the comparison period, the real increases were under 1% and about 1.4% respectively.
That's a genuine break from the long run. Over multi-decade horizons published prices rose far faster than general inflation — the basis for the familiar "college inflation is 5-6%" figure, and for the hint under this page's inflation slider. The 2020s have not looked like that.
Which rate belongs in the slider is genuinely open, and this page takes no position. What it can show is how much the answer depends on it: at 5% the default projection is $196,580.70, at 3% it's $157,428.46. If you can't defend the rate to within a point, don't defend the total to within a dollar.
What is the difference between sticker price and net price?
Sticker price is the published cost of attendance. Net price is that minus grants and scholarships you don't repay — what a family actually faces. They routinely differ by tens of thousands a year, and the gap is largest at the most expensive private colleges, which discount most aggressively; institutional discount rates for first-time full-time students at private nonprofits have run above 50%. The gap also widens as family income falls, which inverts the intuition that expensive schools are for wealthy families.
This calculator projects sticker price. It has no aid model, no income input, and no way to distinguish two students at the same school paying different amounts. Federal law requires every college to publish a net price calculator on its own site — that's the tool for the personalised number, and this one for the gross target you'd save toward. The 529 savings calculator takes the total from this page as its goal.
Why this projection is a range pretending to be a number
The arithmetic is exact and the inputs are guesses, which is the worst combination for a reader's confidence. Everything below is a reason to treat the headline as an order of magnitude.
- The inflation rate is an assumption, not our data — There is no US education-inflation figure in our data modules — the 5% default and the "college costs have historically risen ~5%/yr" hint under the slider are the component's own, and neither traces to a cited source. College Board's most recent figures (2.9% public four-year, 4.0% private nonprofit, 2025-26) are well below 5%, and the page's note that college costs rise faster than general inflation reflects a long-run pattern recent years contradict. Treat 5% as the pessimistic end of a range, not a neutral default.
- No financial aid, at all — Grants, scholarships, institutional discounting, work-study and tax benefits are absent. Given discount rates above 50% at private nonprofits, the projected total can overstate what a family pays by a factor approaching two.
- One rate for the whole bundle — Tuition, fees, housing, food and books are inflated at the same rate. They haven't historically moved together, and housing and food are roughly $19,000 of College Board's $30,990 public four-year budget — so applying a tuition-shaped rate to the whole figure is a real approximation.
- It assumes a clean four years — Six-year graduation is the standard federal completion metric for a reason. An extra year isn't just one more year of cost — it's the most expensive one, because it's furthest into the future. Transfers, gap years, part-time enrolment and a cheaper first two years at a community college are all unmodelled.
- It ignores growth on the money you're saving — A cost projection, not a plan. It says nothing about whether your savings will get there, because it has no return input. That half of the problem lives on the 529 page.
- ·Standard loan amortization / compound-growth formulas
Rates, brackets and limits here are checked against primary sources. If a number still looks off, email support@realmoneyiq.com and we'll review and fix it.
RealMoneyIQ provides free educational calculators, not financial, tax, investment or legal advice. Results are estimates based on the assumptions you enter and publicly published rates; your actual outcome will differ. Always confirm decisions with a licensed professional who knows your full situation.