457b Calculator

Enter your salary, the share of pay you defer, your employer's contribution and your plan's normal retirement age. The calculator works out your 2026 limit, counting your employer's money inside it, and shows the age catch-up and the special catch-up side by side with the one that applies. It treats your salary before deferrals as your includible compensation.

For the projection it keeps your salary and the 2026 limits flat, adds contributions monthly and grows the balance at your return. Each year it adds the limit you leave unused to the amount the special catch-up can use later, and if you tick the box it contributes the maximum in your special catch-up years. It does not model taxes.

If your plan allows it, for one or more of the last 3 tax years ending before the year you reach the plan's normal retirement age, your limit becomes the lesser of:

• twice the basic limit, $49,000 for 2026; or
• the basic limit for the year plus your unused limit: the plan's limit in each earlier year you were eligible for the plan, minus what went in that year, not counting age-50 catch-ups.

With a normal retirement age of 65, the catch-up years are the years you turn 62, 63 and 64; the year you turn 65 no longer counts. At 63 with $20,000 of unused limit, you can put in $44,500; with $24,500 or more unused, the full $49,000. Someone who always deferred the maximum has nothing unused and gains nothing from it.

The plan sets its normal retirement age. It can be any age from the earlier of 65 or the age at which you can retire with an unreduced pension from the employer's basic pension plan, up to 70½, and a plan may let you pick one in that range. For qualified police and firefighters it can be as early as 40. An employer with more than one 457(b) plan cannot give you different normal retirement ages in them. Governmental and non-governmental plans can both offer the special catch-up.

In a governmental plan you may qualify for both in the same year. You then get whichever gives the higher limit, never the two added together. At 62 with $5,000 unused, the special catch-up allows $29,500 and the age 60 to 63 catch-up allows $35,750, so the age catch-up applies. At 63 with $20,000 unused the special catch-up allows $44,500 and wins.

This is how the IRS regulation and IRS pages describe the comparison, and the calculator follows them. SECURE 2.0 reworded the rule in section 457(e)(18) of the tax code: the age side is now the basic limit plus the lesser of your designated Roth contributions to the plan and the age-50 catch-up amount. The regulation has not been updated for this change and the IRS pages checked do not explain how the two fit together, so ask your plan how it applies the rule.

Your 457(b) limit is not combined with what you defer to a 401(k), 403(b) or other plan, so you can max out both. Under 50 that is $49,000 a year, from 50 $65,000 if both plans allow the age-50 catch-up, and at 63 with the full special catch-up up to $84,750. The other plan's limit is shared across all your 401(k), 403(b), TSP, SIMPLE and SARSEP plans; the 403b calculator covers it. Your employer's 457(b) contributions, though, count inside the 457(b) limit.

Distributions from a governmental 457(b) plan are not subject to the 10% additional tax on early distributions, except for amounts that came from a rollover out of another type of plan or an IRA. Pre-tax money is still taxed as income when you take it. If you retire before 59½, to see how long the money lasts, use the retirement withdrawal calculator. For a 401(k) or IRA before 59½, compare the 72(t) calculator.

Required minimum distributions from 457(b) plans must be taken separately from each plan; unlike 403(b)s, they cannot be added up and taken from one. See the RMD calculator.

From 2026, if your 2025 wages from the employer that sponsors the plan were over $150,000, your age-50 or age 60 to 63 catch-up has to go in as Roth contributions. Wages here means wages for Social Security (FICA) tax from that employer. If the plan has no Roth option, you cannot make an age catch-up. The IRS says the special 457(b) catch-up can still be made pre-tax.

The IRS transition period generally ended on December 31, 2025. The final regulations generally apply from 2027, or later for governmental plans, depending on when the legislature that can amend the plan meets, and for collectively bargained plans; until then plans can follow a reasonable, good faith reading of the law.