Percentage Calculator
- Percentage Calculator
- Percentage Change
Disclaimer: Whilst every effort has been made in building our calculator toolswe are not to be held liable for any damages or monetary losses arising out of or in connection with their use. Full disclaimer.
Use our percentage calculator to work out increasesdecreases or percentage differences. Common uses include calculating taxsavings increases tips on a restaurant billor cash back on purchases.
What is a percentage?
A percentage is a number that expresses a portion or proportion of a whole in relation to 100. As an exampleif 80% of a class passed an examit means that 80 out of every 100 students in the class achieved a passing grade.
Percentages are represented by the symbol "%" and provide a standardized method to compare quantities or indicate changes. You'll find them used in fields such as finance and statisticsand you'll likely use them within everyday situationssuch as splitting a billcalculating a gratuity or working out a discount.
Let's take a look at how to calculate percentages.
What is the percentage of Y?
To calculate a percentage based upon a part (X) and a total (Y)divide the value of the part (X) by the total or whole amount (Y). Thenmultiply the result by 100.
As an exampleif you want to find what percentage 15 is of 300you would divide 15 by 300resulting in 0.05. Multiplying 0.05 by 100 gives you 5%.
- Divide the part figure by the whole figure. Soin the case of our example: 15/300 = 0.05.
- Convert this into a percentage figure by multiplying by 100. So0.05 x 100 = 5.
- This gives you your answer. 15 is 5% of 300.
The formula for the calculation looks like this:
You can find out more about how to calculate simple percentage increases and decreases in our article here.
Let's look at some other types of percentage calculation...
How to calculate X percent of Y
In order to explain how to do this calculationwe'll replace the X and Y with a couple of figures. Let's say the question is: What is 10% of 200?. Here's how to do it:
- Change the percentage figure into a decimal by dividing the figure by 100. So10% becomes 10/100 = 0.1.
- Multiply the decimal figure by the full amount. So0.1 x 200 = 20.
- This gives you your answer. 10% of 200 is 20.
The formula for this calculation looks like this:
How to calculate a percentage increase or decrease
Continuing the themelet's add some example figures into our calculation. Let's say the question is: What is the percentage increase from 40 to 68? We can use the percentage change calculator. Or we can work the calculation out manually...
- Subtract X from Y and then divide it by X. In the case of our example it would be (68-40) / 40. Note that we've put brackets around the first part to ensure this is done first (PEMDAS).
- (68-40) / 40 gives us a result of 0.7. To convert this into a percentage we multiply it by 100. So0.7 x 100 = 70.
- This gives you your answer. The percentage increase from 40 to 68 = 70%.
Here's the formula for this calculation:
If you're trying to calculate a percentage pay increase for workyou can use our pay raise calculator for this.
X is Y percentage of what number?
Let's again replace the X and Y with a couple of figures. Let's say the question is: 5 is 20% of what number?.
- Change the Y percentage figure into a decimal. We do this by dividing the figure by 100. So20% becomes 20/100 = 0.2.
- Divide our X figure by our Y figure. so5 / 0.2 = 25.
- This gives you your answer. 5 is 20% of 25.
Here's the formula:
To check your calculationsyou can use the percentage calculator at the top of the page. If you're using percentages to work out cash back on purchasesgive our Cash Back Calculator a try for a quick breakdown based on the cash back rate.
I hope you've found our calculator and article useful.
Calculator by Alastair Hazell