Use the slider, the +/- buttons, or click the year number and type directly. You can explore any year from 1976 to 2076. Years before today are historical, years after are projections.

Select from 20 major world currencies. Enter any amount you want to compare. The calculator handles everything from small everyday amounts to large figures.

Two cards appear. Card A answers: what could that money buy in the selected year? Card B answers: how much would you need today to match that purchasing power?

The percentage badges show how much purchasing power has changed. Red means it shrank, green means it grew.

The chart below the cards plots the full trajectory of purchasing power and cost of goods from the reference year to the selected year. Hover or tap anywhere on the chart to see the value for a specific year.

You can also overlay gold and silver prices for comparison (available for historical years only).

Enter your old salary and the year you received it, then your current salary. The tool tells you whether you got a genuine raise after inflation, or whether your real purchasing power shrank.

Projected Raise is the raw nominal difference. Real Raise strips out inflation and shows what you actually gained or lost.

This section shows how each currency has moved against the US Dollar, starting from your selected reference year. The selected currency appears at the top. Tap the expand icon on any row to see a full exchange rate chart to today.

For years beyond 2024, the calculator uses each currency's historical compound average inflation rate as an estimate. These are not forecasts. Real future inflation will differ based on economic conditions, policy changes, and global events.

By default, comparisons are made relative to today (2026). On desktop, you can click "Change Reference Year" to set a different base year. This is useful for comparing two historical years directly.

The calculator uses real annual CPI (Consumer Price Index) data from 1976 to 2024. It builds a cumulative index by chaining each year's inflation rate on top of the previous year. For example, if inflation was 5% in Year 1 and 6% in Year 2, the total factor is not 11% but 1.05 x 1.06 = 11.3%. This compounding is how prices actually accumulate over time.

For any two years you compare, the tool takes the ratio of their index values. If the index is 150 in 2024 and 100 in 2010, the factor is 1.5, meaning prices are 50% higher. Your entered amount is then multiplied by this factor to give the equivalent value.

For years beyond 2024, real data is not yet available. The tool uses each currency's historical compound average inflation rate as a forward estimate. These are not forecasts. Treat future projections as rough illustrations only.

When you enter your old salary and year (and optionally month), the tool calculates what that salary would need to be today just to keep up with inflation. This is your inflation-adjusted salary.

It uses the same compounded CPI data as the main calculator. If you entered a specific month, the partial year is handled by raising the annual inflation factor to a fractional power (e.g. 6 years and 3 months becomes 6.25). This is a standard approximation since monthly CPI data is not used here.

Example: You earned Rs 50,000 in January 2020. By March 2026, cumulative inflation has been roughly 40%, making the inflation-adjusted equivalent Rs 70,000. If your current salary is Rs 65,000, your nominal raise is +Rs 15,000 (30%) but your real raise is -Rs 5,000. Inflation outpaced you.

Raise Quality shows what fraction of your nominal raise was genuinely real. In this example, you needed Rs 20,000 just to break even but only received Rs 15,000, so raise quality is negative.

The percentage shown next to each currency is the total change in its exchange rate against the US Dollar from your selected reference year to today. A negative figure means the currency has weakened against USD (you need more of it to buy one dollar now than you did then). A positive figure means it has strengthened.

Historical rates from 1976 to 2025 come from the World Bank WDI (indicator PA.NUS.FCRF), which gives official annual average exchange rates. Not all currencies have data going back to 1976 — the chart starts from the earliest year available for each. The 2026 data point uses a live rate fetched from a free currency API and refreshed daily.

The chart inside each currency shows yearly snapshots of the exchange rate. These are annual averages, not daily spot rates, so they will differ from rates you see on a given day.

CPI inflation data: IMF World Economic Outlook and World Bank World Development Indicators, covering 20 currencies from 1976 to 2024.

Historical exchange rates: World Bank WDI indicator PA.NUS.FCRF (official annual average, local currency units per USD), 1976 to 2025. Coverage varies by currency — data starts from 1976 for most major currencies.

Live exchange rates: fawazahmed0 currency API via jsDelivr CDN, refreshed daily. Fallback to open.er-api.com if primary source is unavailable.

Gold and silver prices: Historical commodity data from public sources, used for comparison in the purchasing power chart.

This tool is for financial education and general awareness only. It is not financial advice, investment advice, or a substitute for professional guidance.

CPI measures average price changes across a standardised basket of goods. Your personal experience of inflation may differ significantly based on your location, lifestyle, and spending patterns. Someone who rents will experience inflation differently from a homeowner. Someone in a metro city will see different numbers than someone in a smaller town.

All projections for future years are estimates based on historical averages. Actual future inflation is impossible to predict and may vary substantially due to economic shocks, policy changes, or global events.

Live exchange rates and recent CPI figures may not yet reflect the latest official releases. There can be a lag between when data is published and when this tool is updated.

Before making any financial or economic decision, always verify figures from official sources. These include the Reserve Bank of India, US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Eurostat, the IMF, and your country's national statistics office.

While every effort is made to use accurate data, figures may occasionally differ from official publications due to data revisions, rounding differences, or timing of updates. Historical CPI series are sometimes revised retroactively by statistical agencies. This tool is updated periodically and should not be used as a real-time or authoritative reference.

This Money, That Year is an educational tool by Himanshu Gawri.