Percentage Increase Calculator
Find out how much a value has grown in percentage terms. Enter the original value and the new value to get the percentage increase.
Enter values to calculate.
How to calculate
Percentage increase measures how much a value has grown, expressed as a share of its starting point: ((new value − original value) ÷ original value) × 100. Use it whenever you want to know growth in relative terms — revenue quarter over quarter, a price hike, a population increase — rather than just the raw difference.
To calculate by hand, subtract the original from the new value to get the raw change, divide that by the original value, then multiply by 100. Going from 40 to 52: the change is 12, divide by 40 to get 0.3, multiply by 100 for a 30% increase.
A percentage increase can exceed 100% — going from 40 to 100 is a 150% increase, not 100%, because the value more than doubled. Also, increases and decreases aren't symmetric: a 50% increase followed by a 50% decrease does not return you to the start, since the second percentage is taken from a larger number.
Examples
- From 80 to 100: ((100 − 80) ÷ 80) × 100 = 25% increase.
- From 50 to 75: ((75 − 50) ÷ 50) × 100 = 50% increase.
- From 40 to 52: ((52 − 40) ÷ 40) × 100 = 30% increase.
- From 90 to 126: ((126 − 90) ÷ 90) × 100 = 40% increase.
Frequently asked questions
- What is the percentage increase formula?
- Subtract the original value from the new value, divide by the original value, then multiply by 100.
- What if the result is negative?
- A negative result means the value decreased rather than increased. Use the percentage decrease calculator to express that drop as a positive number.
- Can a percentage increase be more than 100%?
- Yes. A percentage increase is only capped at 100% if the value exactly doubles. If a value more than doubles — say from 40 to 100 — the increase is 150%, since ((100 − 40) ÷ 40) × 100 = 150. There's no upper limit; increases can run into the thousands of percent for very fast growth.
- How do I find the original value before a percentage increase?
- Divide the new value by (1 + the percentage as a decimal). If a price rose 20% to $60, divide 60 by 1.20 to get the original $50. This reverses the increase formula instead of applying it, and is useful when you only know the final price and the percentage applied.