Inflation-Adjusted Salary Calculator
Is your salary actually growing in real terms?
Real change in purchasing power
-5.1%
Nominal change 10.0% · to keep pace you'd need 57,964 today
A salary that stays flat is quietly shrinking: inflation erodes its purchasing power every year. This calculator compares your past and current salary against inflation to show whether you've had a real-terms raise or a real-terms cut.
Enter your old salary, current salary, the number of years and average inflation, and it shows your real change in purchasing power alongside the headline nominal change.
Nominal growth versus real growth
A salary that rose 3% in a year when prices rose 5% has fallen about 2% in real terms. Nothing on your payslip shows this, which is why stagnation is easy to miss: the number goes up every year while what it buys goes down.
The comparison that matters is not this year against last year, but this year against the year you last felt comfortable. Compounding over five or ten years turns a series of below-inflation raises into a gap large enough to be worth naming in a pay conversation.
Why your inflation is not the published one
Headline inflation is a weighted average across a basket meant to represent an average household. Yours is not average. If rent is 40% of your take-home, your personal inflation rate tracks the rental market far more closely than the official figure, and rents have moved very differently from the index in most large cities.
The same applies to energy, childcare and commuting. If those dominate your spending, use the index as a floor and assume your real experience is worse, then judge a raise against that rather than against the headline number.
Using the result in a pay conversation
Arguing that you should be paid more because prices rose is a weak position. Arguing that your compensation has fallen in real terms by a specific, arithmetically demonstrable amount is a much stronger one, because it converts a complaint into a measurement.
Pair it with what the market currently pays for your role, which the salary-by-job pages on this site give you a benchmark for, and negotiate the gap rather than a percentage. A number with a derivation behind it is far harder to wave away.
Turning the result into a decision
A real-terms figure is only useful if it changes what you do next. If it shows a fall, the immediate question is whether the gap is recoverable through a raise, a move, or a change of employer — and the honest answer usually depends on how far behind the market your current pay has drifted while inflation was doing the same work in the background.
If it shows growth, the question is whether it is growth you can keep. A raise that arrives alongside a move to a more expensive city, a bigger mortgage or higher childcare costs can be real in the index and invisible in your account. Run the after-tax figure through the cost-of-living comparator before treating a nominal gain as a genuine one.
Related
Frequently Asked Questions
+How does inflation affect my salary?
If your salary rises slower than inflation, you can buy less than before even though the number is bigger — a real-terms pay cut. To keep pace, your salary needs to grow at least as fast as the inflation rate each year.
Estimate only — not tax advice. Figures are estimates based on publicly available tax rules and may not reflect your full circumstances. See our methodology & sources (last reviewed June 2026). Always confirm with an official tax authority or a licensed adviser before making decisions.