401(k) Calculator
Project your 401(k) balance at retirement, including employer matching, raises, and the 2026 contribution limits. See exactly how much of your final balance is free money from the match.
Enter your details to project your 401(k) balance at retirement.
Each year, the calculator takes your salary, applies your contribution percentage, and adds the result to your balance along with the employer match. Your existing balance grows at your expected return, and your salary grows at the raise rate you set. It repeats until retirement age.
The match follows the standard formula: your employer contributes a percentage of what you put in, up to a cap expressed as a percentage of your salary. With a 50% match up to 6%, contributing 6% or more of your pay earns you an extra 3% of salary every year. That's an instant 50% return on those dollars before the market does anything at all.
The calculator also enforces the 2026 employee deferral limits: $24,500 as the base, $32,500 if you're 50 or older, and $35,750 in the years you're 60 through 63 thanks to the SECURE 2.0 enhanced catch-up. Any year your percentage-based contribution would blow past the limit, the projection caps it and marks the row.
Take a 30-year-old earning $75,000 with $25,000 already saved. They contribute 10% of salary, get a 50% match on the first 6%, earn 7% a year, and receive 3% raises until retiring at 65:
- Projected balance at 65: about $2,183,452
- Their own contributions: about $453,466
- Employer match: about $136,040 of free money
- Investment growth: about $1,568,947
Notice the shape of those numbers. The saver put in under half a million dollars, and compounding turned it into well over two million. The match alone is worth more than five years of their own contributions, and all it cost was staying enrolled in the plan.
Balance = Balance × (1 + r) + min(Salary × c, Limit) + Salary × min(c, m) × p
Here r is the annual return, c is your contribution rate, m is the match limit as a fraction of salary, p is the match percentage, and Limit is the deferral cap for your age that year. Salary then grows by your raise rate before the next year runs.
| Limit | 2026 amount |
|---|---|
| Employee deferral (under 50) | $24,500 |
| Catch-up, age 50 and older | $8,000 (total $32,500) |
| Enhanced catch-up, ages 60 to 63 (SECURE 2.0) | $11,250 (total $35,750) |
| Combined employee plus employer limit | $72,000 |
One more 2026 change worth knowing: if your prior-year Social Security wages topped $150,000, any catch-up contributions must go in as Roth. The enhanced catch-up is also optional at the plan level, so confirm your employer offers it.