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Updated for 2026 Data

The True Value of
Your Money

See how inflation has eroded purchasing power over the decades. Compare what ₹100 bought in your birth year versus today.

NostalgiaFlation — visualization of how the Indian rupee's purchasing power has changed from 1960 to 2026

📊 Inflation Calculator

How this calculator works

Enter an amount and a year, and the calculator reports what that sum is worth in today's money. It does this with the Consumer Price Index: if the index stood at 25 in 1995 and stands near 190 today, then ₹100 in 1995 had roughly the same purchasing power as ₹760 now. Years between published data points are interpolated, which is why a figure may shift slightly as you move the year by one.

The rupee series runs from 1960 and is compiled from the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, the Labour Bureau and the Reserve Bank of India. The calculator also covers the US dollar from 1950, the euro from 1996 and the Chinese yuan from 1990, so you can compare how the same period treated different currencies.

What a single inflation number can and cannot tell you

The headline index is an average across a basket of goods and services, weighted by what a typical household spends. That makes it useful for comparing decades and close to useless for describing any particular household. Your own rate depends on what you actually buy.

The spread is wide enough to matter. Over the past two decades school and college fees, urban housing, medical treatment and gold have all risen considerably faster than the index, while mobile calls, data and consumer electronics have become cheaper in plain rupee terms. A family paying private school fees and rent in a metro experiences something quite different from the national figure, and neither is wrong — they are measuring different baskets.

This is also why the calculator is best read as a rough translator between decades rather than a precise statement about your finances. It answers “what order of magnitude was this?” well, and “what will this cost me?” not at all.

Where to go next

The price tracker follows individual items instead of the average, which is usually more revealing. Understanding Inflation explains how the index is actually assembled and why the basket changes over time, and Protecting Your Savings looks at what a fixed deposit really returns once inflation and tax are both accounted for.