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Inflation Calculator

Calculators · Added 14 August 2026

Inflation asks two different questions and people constantly conflate them: what will this basket of goods cost later, and what will this sum of money still buy later? They are reciprocals of the same factor, and they produce very different numbers. This calculator shows both side by side, at whatever rate you choose.

%

Your own assumption — see the note under the result.

How to use the inflation calculator

  1. 1Enter the amount you want to examine.
  2. 2Enter your own inflation assumption. There is no official long-range forecast, so this is your input rather than a number the page supplies.
  3. 3Set the starting year and the target year.
  4. 4Press Calculate.
  5. 5Read both panels: one is what the same goods will cost, the other is what the same money will buy. They answer different questions.

Examples

A decade at 6%

Input
₹1,00,000 from 2026 to 2036 at 6%
Result
The same goods cost ₹1,79,085 · the same money buys what ₹55,839 buys today

Roughly 44% of the purchasing power is gone. Both figures come from the same factor of 1.79.

Cash left idle for thirty years

Input
₹10,00,000 from 2026 to 2056 at 6%
Result
Buys what about ₹1,74,110 buys today

Over 82% of the value is lost. This is the argument against holding long-term savings in cash, stated numerically.

A modest rate over a long period

Input
₹5,00,000 from 2026 to 2046 at 4%
Result
The same goods cost about ₹10,95,562

Even a rate that sounds harmless more than doubles prices across twenty years.

About the inflation calculator

The two questions inflation answers

Ask someone what inflation does to ₹1,00,000 over ten years and you will get one of two answers, both confidently given and only one of them addressing the question they meant. Either the amount 'becomes ₹1,79,000' or it 'becomes ₹56,000'. Both are arithmetically correct; they are answers to different questions.

The first is prospective cost: the basket of goods you can buy today for ₹1,00,000 will carry a price tag of ₹1,79,085 in ten years. This is the number you want when budgeting for a future expense — a fee, a purchase, a project cost.

The second is eroded purchasing power: ₹1,00,000 sitting in a drawer for ten years will, at the end, buy what ₹55,839 buys today. This is the number you want when thinking about savings, cash holdings and the real value of a fixed sum. Showing only one of them, as most calculators do, is why the confusion persists.

Why this quietly governs most financial decisions

Inflation is the reason a nominal return is not a return. A fixed deposit paying 7% while prices rise 6% has earned roughly one percent of real purchasing power before tax — and after tax at a higher slab, it has lost ground. The deposit is not a bad product; it is being asked to do a job it was never designed for.

It is also the reason long-horizon goals cannot be planned in today's rupees. A retirement corpus, a child's education fund, a twenty-year target of any kind — all of them are denominated in future prices, and planning them with present-day figures understates the requirement by a factor that grows with the horizon. Thirty years at 6% is a factor of 5.7, which is not a rounding error.

The one honest caveat is that nobody knows the rate. Long-range inflation is genuinely unforecastable, and anyone presenting a single number with confidence is overreaching. The defensible approach is to run the same plan at several rates, see how much the answer moves, and build in margin proportional to that spread rather than to the central estimate.

Frequently asked questions

What rate should I use?
Whatever you can defend, and then a second run at a rate a point or two higher. There is no reliable long-range inflation forecast, which is why this page asks rather than assumes. Historical averages are a starting point, but the rate that matters to you depends on what you actually buy.
Why do the two figures differ so much?
Because they are reciprocals rather than opposites. Multiplying by (1 + rate) to the power of years gives what a basket will cost; dividing by the same factor gives what a fixed sum will buy. Over ten years at 6% the factor is about 1.79 — so ₹1,00,000 becomes ₹1,79,085 in cost terms and ₹55,839 in purchasing terms. Both are correct answers to different questions.
Does headline inflation apply to me?
Only loosely. A consumer price index tracks a representative basket, and your basket is not it. School fees, healthcare and urban rent have run well above headline CPI in most years, while electronics and some manufactured goods have fallen. A household that spends heavily on education and medical care experiences meaningfully higher inflation than the published number.
Is this an official inflation forecast?
No. Nothing on this page forecasts anything. It applies a rate you supply to a period you supply, which is arithmetic rather than prediction. Treat the output as a way of testing how sensitive a plan is, not as a statement about the future.
How do I work out a real return?
Divide rather than subtract. A 9% return with 6% inflation is not a 3% real return but 1.09 ÷ 1.06 − 1, which is about 2.83%. Subtraction is a decent approximation at low rates and drifts noticeably at high ones — the difference compounds across a long horizon.

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