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Inflation calculator: prices then versus prices now

⏳ Prices then versus prices now snapshot loading…

A price from the past always looks cheap. Type any amount — a wage, a house, a car, a pint — and the year, and see it in another year's money. Consumer prices (CPI), the same series the Bank of England's calculator uses.
Your amount, year by year

i A figure from the past only means something next to today's prices. This is the general price level — what money buys — not house prices or wages, which have each run on their own path. A house that merely kept pace with prices since 1995 would have roughly doubled; most did far more than that, and that gap is the next thing we will show you.

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⏳ How the calculator works

Which prices?
The Consumer Prices Index (CPI) — the official measure of the price of a basket of goods and services. The ONS publishes it from 1988 and a modelled back-series from 1949; we chain the two at 1988, which is what the Bank of England's own calculator does. Every year is the annual average, so "1975" means across 1975, not one day of it.
Why not RPI?
The Retail Prices Index runs back further but lost its status as a National Statistic in 2013 because of a flaw in how it is calculated. The Bank does not use it and neither do we.
What it is not
It is not house prices, wages, or any one thing's price. A pint, a house and a week's pay have each moved on their own path; CPI is what money in general buys. Use it to ask "was that cheap at the time?" — then compare with what the thing actually costs now.
The check we run
The Bank's worked example says £23 in 1975 is £57.68 in 1985, rising 9.6% a year. Our series gives the same answer to the penny; the build fails if it ever does not.

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