529 Plan Calculator

Background.

A 529 plan calculator answers the question every college-savings account owner actually needs answered: given what I'm saving today, will it be enough by the time tuition bills arrive, once tuition itself keeps rising every year between now and enrollment? A 529 plan is a tax-advantaged education savings account authorized under Section 529 of the Internal Revenue Code — contributions grow free of federal tax, and withdrawals used for qualified education expenses are entirely tax-free. But a 529 account's investment return is only half the picture; the other half is that college costs have historically risen faster than general inflation, so a savings plan that only projects account growth in isolation, without projecting the target cost forward on the same timeline, can look far more adequate than it actually is. This calculator runs both projections side by side and reports the gap between them.

Enter your current 529 balance, your planned monthly contribution, the years until the student enrolls, your expected investment return, today's annual cost at the type of school you're targeting, an assumed annual college-cost inflation rate, and the number of years of enrollment you want the total cost to cover. The calculator compounds your savings forward exactly like a standard monthly-contribution investment projection, and separately compounds your target school's current annual cost forward by the tuition-inflation rate you choose — critically, continuing to inflate the cost through every year the student is actually enrolled, not just up to the day they start, because the junior-year bill is higher than the freshman-year bill at any school with rising prices. The result is a funding gap: a positive number means your projected savings fall short of the projected total cost, and a negative number means your plan is on track to produce a surplus.

College Board's Trends in College Pricing and Student Aid 2025 report found single-year sticker-price increases of roughly 2.7% for public four-year in-state tuition, 3.4% for public four-year out-of-state, and 4.0% for private nonprofit four-year tuition for the 2025-26 academic year — all nominal, before adjusting for general inflation. Over long multi-decade stretches, college cost inflation has often run at or above general CPI inflation, though the same College Board report notes that inflation-adjusted net tuition at public institutions has actually declined over the past decade once financial aid is factored in. Because sticker price, net price, and long-run trend can diverge substantially, this calculator's tuition-inflation input is a scenario assumption you control, not a guaranteed forecast — the default of 4.5% sits in a commonly used planning range, but you should rerun the projection at both a lower and higher rate to see how sensitive your funding gap is to that single assumption.

A handful of federal 529 rules matter for anyone actually funding one of these accounts in 2026. Contributions are treated as completed gifts for gift-tax purposes, and the 2026 annual gift-tax exclusion is $19,000 per contributor per beneficiary ($38,000 for a married couple electing to split gifts) — 529 plans also uniquely allow a five-year "superfunding" election that lets a contributor front-load up to five years of the annual exclusion in one year ($95,000 individual, $190,000 joint) without using any lifetime gift-tax exemption, provided it is treated ratably over the five years on a gift-tax return. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act doubled the annual limit on 529 withdrawals for K-12 tuition from $10,000 to $20,000 per student, effective January 1, 2026, and also broadened qualified K-12 expenses beyond tuition to include curriculum materials, tutoring, and certain other costs. Separately, SECURE 2.0 allows up to $35,000 of long-unused 529 funds to be rolled into a Roth IRA for the same beneficiary over their lifetime, subject to the beneficiary's normal annual Roth contribution limit each year, a requirement that the 529 account be at least 15 years old, and an exclusion of any contributions (and their earnings) made within the preceding five years. This calculator projects the savings-versus-cost math; consult a tax advisor or your plan's official disclosure document for the specific gift-tax, state-deduction, and rollover mechanics that apply to your situation.

What is 529 plan calculator?

A 529 plan is a state-sponsored, tax-advantaged savings vehicle authorized under Section 529 of the Internal Revenue Code, designed to help families save for education costs. There are two main types: a college savings plan, which functions like an investment account with a menu of mutual-fund-style portfolios (including age-based options that automatically shift toward more conservative holdings as enrollment nears), and a prepaid tuition plan, which lets a family lock in future tuition at today's rate at a specific public in-state institution. This calculator models the college savings plan structure, which is by far the more common of the two. Contributions to a 529 are made with after-tax dollars at the federal level (many states offer a state income tax deduction or credit for contributions to that state's own plan), the account grows without federal tax on dividends or capital gains, and withdrawals are entirely tax-free at the federal level when used for qualified education expenses — tuition, fees, books, required equipment, and room and board for students enrolled at least half-time, plus, since 2026, up to $20,000 per year in K-12 tuition and related expenses per student under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Withdrawals used for non-qualified expenses are subject to ordinary income tax on the earnings portion plus a 10% federal penalty on those earnings (contributions, having already been taxed, come out penalty-free). A 529 plan has no beneficiary age limit and no federal contribution deadline each year, and the account owner (not the student) always retains control of the funds and can change the named beneficiary to another qualifying family member at any time.

How to use this calculator.

1. 01Enter the current 529 account balance.
2. 02Enter the monthly contribution you plan to make until the student enrolls.
3. 03Enter the number of years until enrollment begins.
4. 04Enter the expected annual investment return for the account's chosen portfolio.
5. 05Enter today's annual cost (tuition, fees, room, and board) at the type of school you're targeting.
6. 06Enter an assumed annual college-cost inflation rate — try both a conservative and an aggressive assumption to see the range of outcomes.
7. 07Enter the number of years the total projected cost should cover, typically 4.
8. 08Compare the projected balance against the total projected cost, and read the funding gap: positive means a shortfall to plan for, negative means a projected surplus.

The formula.

Reviewed on 2026-07-27. The savings side compounds monthly: with i = annualReturnPercent/100/12 as the monthly rate and months = yearsUntilCollege × 12, the projected balance is currentBalance × (1+i)^months + monthlyContribution × [((1+i)^months − 1) / i], the standard ordinary-annuity future-value identity; when i = 0 the annuity term collapses to monthlyContribution × months instead of dividing by zero. The cost side compounds annually: with g = tuitionInflationPercent/100, the first year's projected cost is currentAnnualCollegeCost × (1+g)^yearsUntilCollege. Because tuition keeps rising during enrollment, not just before it, the total projected cost sums every enrolled year's inflated cost as a geometric series: firstYearProjectedCost × [((1+g)^yearsInCollege − 1) / g], collapsing to firstYearProjectedCost × yearsInCollege when g = 0. The funding gap is simply totalProjectedCost minus the projected 529 balance — a positive gap is a dollar shortfall still to close through additional saving, financial aid, or borrowing; a negative gap means the current plan is projected to more than cover the target cost. All arithmetic uses arbitrary-precision decimal math to avoid floating-point drift over long, multi-decade horizons.

A worked example.

Frequently asked questions.

References& sources.

1. [1]Internal Revenue Service. Publication 970: Tax Benefits for Education — federal tax treatment of qualified tuition programs (529 plans).
2. [2]Internal Revenue Service (2025). IRS releases tax inflation adjustments for tax year 2026, including amendments from the One, Big, Beautiful Bill — 2026 annual gift tax exclusion.
3. [3]College Board (2025). Trends in College Pricing and Student Aid 2025 — published tuition price increases by sector for the 2025-26 academic year.