Skip to main content
Percentage Calculator
Calculate

Percentage Increase Calculator

Find out how much a value has grown in percentage terms. Enter where it started and where it ended up, and this increase percentage calculator shows the result along with the arithmetic behind it.

What is the percentage increase?

Enter your numbers and press Calculate — the full working appears here.

The percentage increase formula

A percentage increase measures growth relative to where you started. The original value is the reference point, which is why it sits on the bottom of the fraction.

((New − Original) ÷ Original) × 100

((150 − 100) ÷ 100) × 100 = 50%

The same £50 rise is a 50% increase on £100 but only a 5% increase on £1,000 — which is exactly why the original value matters.

Worked example: a pay rise

Your salary goes from $45,000 to $52,000. What percentage rise is that?

  1. Find the size of the rise.52,000 − 45,000 = 7,000
  2. Divide it by the original salary.7,000 ÷ 45,000 = 0.1556
  3. Multiply by 100.0.1556 × 100 ≈ 15.56%

Answer≈ 15.56% increase

Open this example in the calculator →

When you need a percentage increase

  • Pay rises — turning a raise into a figure you can compare against inflation or against last year's rise.
  • Price and rent rises — judging whether an increase is in line with the market or out of step with it.
  • Business growth — revenue, orders or subscribers this quarter against last.
  • Website traffic — month-over-month sessions, where the percentage matters far more than the raw number.
  • Investment gains — the return on a holding between two points in time.

A trap worth knowing

A percentage increase and the percentage decrease that undoes it are not the same number. If a $100 item rises 50% to $150, it takes a 33.3% fall — not 50% — to get back to $100. The increase is measured against $100 and the decrease against $150, so the same $50 movement produces two different percentages. The percentage decrease calculator works the other direction.

Frequently asked questions

How do I calculate percentage increase?
Subtract the original value from the new value, divide the result by the original value, then multiply by 100. Going from 100 to 150: 150 − 100 = 50, then 50 ÷ 100 = 0.5, then 0.5 × 100 = 50%.
What is the percentage increase from 100 to 150?
50%. The value rose by 50, and 50 is half of the original 100, so the increase is 50%.
Why do I divide by the original value and not the new one?
Because an increase is measured against where you started. Dividing by the new value would answer a different question — what share of the final figure the growth represents — and would give a smaller number for the same movement.
What is the difference between a percentage increase and percentage points?
Percentage points measure the gap between two percentages directly. If a rate rises from 4% to 5%, that is a rise of 1 percentage point, but a 25% increase. Both are correct; they answer different questions, and mixing them up is the single most common percentage error in reporting.
What if my value went down instead of up?
The calculator says so rather than returning a confusing negative — it will tell you the size of the decrease and point you to the percentage decrease calculator.
How do I add a percentage increase to a number?
Multiply by 1 plus the percentage as a decimal. To add 15% to 80, multiply 80 × 1.15 = 92. This is faster than working out the increase and adding it separately.

Related calculators