Percentage Increase Calculator

Get the percent change between any two numbers.

Result

25.00%
20.00
1.25x

How it is calculated

The tool takes an old and a new value and returns three numbers. The percent change is (new − old) ÷ old × 100, the absolute change is new − old in the same unit as your values, and the multiple is new ÷ old, shown with an x. A positive percent means an increase and a negative one a decrease, so the same tool also covers drops. The old value is the base and must be above zero: a zero or negative old value shows no result, because a percentage change from such a base is undefined or ambiguous. The new value may be zero or negative. Percent and absolute change are shown to two decimals, and the multiple to two decimals with an x.

Worked example

A price rises from 80 to 100. Absolute change: 100 − 80 = 20.00. Divide by the old value: 20 ÷ 80 = 0.25. Multiply by 100: 25.00%. The multiple is 100 ÷ 80 = 1.25x. If the price fell from 80 to 60 instead, the tool would show -25.00%, a change of -20.00 and 0.75x.

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Common mistakes

  • Swapping old and new. Going from 80 to 100 is +25%, but entering 100 as old and 80 as new gives -20.00%, because the base changes.
  • Expecting a rise and the matching fall to cancel. Up 25% from 80 to 100 and then down 25% from 100 gives 75, not 80, since the second change uses a bigger base.
  • Starting from zero or a negative value. A jump from 0 to 25 has no defined percentage increase, and old values of zero or below give no result.
  • Mixing up percent change with percentage points. A rate going from 4% to 5% is up 1 percentage point, but the tool shows 25.00% because that is the relative increase.
  • Reading a result below -100% as an error. A new value that is negative, such as 80 to -20, gives -125.00%, which is correct arithmetic for a value that crossed zero.

About this calculator

Percentage increase measures how much a value has grown relative to its starting point, calculated as (New Value − Old Value) ÷ Old Value × 100. The result expresses the change as a percentage of the original figure, not the new one, which is why the same dollar or unit increase produces a larger percentage increase on a smaller starting value than on a larger one.

This calculation shows up everywhere from tracking a stock or salary’s growth, to measuring price inflation on a product, to comparing sales figures period over period, and it’s worth distinguishing from percentage change generally, since a percentage increase specifically assumes the new value is larger than the old one — a decline is expressed as a percentage decrease using the same base formula, just with a negative result.

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Comments (1)

  • Editorial team

    Watch for percent versus percentage points. A rate moving from 4 to 6 is a 50.00% increase, yet only a 2 point rise, and the headline you quote changes the impression entirely. This tool measures the first kind. A drop is handled as well: 200 to 150 shows -25.00% with a multiple of 0.75x. Where are you using it, prices, traffic, salaries or something else, and do you usually quote the percent or the multiple?

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