Roth IRA Limits for 2026: What You Can Contribute and When It Phases Out

For 2026 the Roth IRA contribution limit is $7,500, up from $7,000 in 2025. If you are 50 or older, add a $1,100 catch-up, for $8,600 — the catch-up also rose, from $1,000.

Those are the headline numbers. Whether you can contribute that much depends on your modified adjusted gross income, or MAGI, and your filing status — and that is where people get surprised, usually in April when they file.

The two limits, side by side

Every threshold moved up for 2026 except the last one. The married-filing-separately range has been frozen at $0–$10,000 since 1998 because it is written into the statute rather than adjusted annually — which makes it one of the harshest cliffs in the tax code. If you file separately to optimize student loan repayment, price that lost Roth eligibility against the savings before you commit.

One useful exception: spouses who lived apart for the entire year are treated as Single for this purpose, so each can use the $153,000–$168,000 range.

How the partial contribution is actually computed

Inside the phase-out range your limit shrinks proportionally. The worksheet in IRS Publication 590-A runs like this:

1. Subtract your MAGI from the upper threshold.
2. Divide by the range width — $15,000 for Single and head of household, $10,000 for married filing jointly.
3. Multiply by your full limit ($7,500, or $8,600 if 50+).
4. Round up to the next $10.
5. If the result is above zero but below $200, you can still contribute $200.

Example 1. Single, age 45, MAGI $160,000.

($168,000 − $160,000) ÷ $15,000 = 0.5333
0.5333 × $7,500 = $4,000

Maximum contribution: $4,000.

Example 2. Same person at 52, so the $8,600 limit applies.

0.5333 × $8,600 = $4,586.67  →  rounds up to $4,590

Example 3. Married filing jointly, both under 50, MAGI $247,000.

($252,000 − $247,000) ÷ $10,000 = 0.50
0.50 × $7,500 = $3,750

Note that the joint range is narrower — $10,000 wide versus $15,000 — so joint filers lose eligibility faster once they cross the lower threshold.

The Roth IRA calculator runs this worksheet and also projects the balance, so you can see both the contribution limit and what that contribution is worth over time.

Three things people miss

Your contribution cannot exceed what you earned. The limit is the lesser of the annual cap and your taxable compensation for the year. Someone who earned $3,000 from a part-time job can contribute $3,000, not $7,500. Wages, salary, tips, and self-employment net earnings count. Investment income, Social Security benefits, unemployment compensation, and pension income do not.

Traditional and Roth share one limit. The $7,500 is the combined ceiling across all your IRAs. You cannot put $7,500 in a traditional IRA and another $7,500 in a Roth. Splitting $4,000 and $3,500 is fine; $7,500 and $7,500 is not.

A non-earning spouse can still fund one. Under the spousal IRA rule, a married couple filing jointly can contribute to an IRA for a spouse with little or no compensation, using the couple's joint income. This is one of the more under-used provisions available to single-income households.

What MAGI means here

For Roth purposes, MAGI starts with your adjusted gross income from Form 1040 and adds back a specific list: certain IRA and pension deductions, student loan interest, the domestic production activities deduction, foreign earned income exclusions, and a few others. It is not the same MAGI used for every other credit in the code, which is why plugging in the wrong AGI produces confidently wrong answers. If your income sits anywhere near a threshold, run the actual worksheet rather than estimating.

If your MAGI is close to the line

Because the phase-out is a formula rather than a cliff, sitting just inside the range means every dollar you can legitimately move out of MAGI buys back contribution room.

The moves that reliably lower MAGI for a Roth calculation:

• Pre-tax 401(k) or 403(b) contributions. These reduce AGI directly, which flows into MAGI.
• Health savings account contributions, if you are enrolled in a qualifying high-deductible plan.
• Self-employed health insurance and SEP or solo 401(k) contributions, which are deducted above the line.

A single filer at $156,000 who contributes $4,000 to a pre-tax 401(k) drops to $152,000 — under the threshold, and suddenly eligible for the full $7,500 instead of a reduced amount. That is the difference between a planned $6,000 contribution and the full limit, purely from sequencing the deduction correctly.

Worth knowing: traditional 401(k) contributions reduce MAGI, but Roth 401(k) contributions do not, because they are made after tax. If Roth eligibility is your goal, the pre-tax side of the 401(k) is the lever.

Taking money out before 59½

This is where Roth IRAs are quietly more flexible than their reputation.

• Your contributions come out at any time, at any age, with no tax and no penalty. You already paid tax on that money. There is no waiting period and no reason to justify the withdrawal.
• Your earnings are subject to two tests: the account must have been open for at least five years, and the withdrawal generally needs to happen after age 59½, on death or disability, or for a first-home purchase of up to $10,000.

The five-year clock runs from January 1 of the tax year of your first contribution, not from the date you opened the account — a distinction that matters if you opened in December and funded in April.

This is why a Roth is a defensible emergency backstop in a way a traditional IRA is not. It is still a bad idea to raid retirement money, but the penalty structure is far more forgiving than most people assume.

If you earn too much to contribute directly

Earning above the phase-out does not mean the door is shut. A backdoor Roth — making a nondeductible traditional IRA contribution and then converting it to a Roth — is a widely used route around the income limit. It works, but it carries mechanics that matter: the pro-rata rule means existing pre-tax traditional IRA balances can make part of the conversion taxable, and the conversion needs to be reported on Form 8606. If you hold any traditional, SEP, or SIMPLE IRA money, talk to someone before doing it.

This is also worth flagging: contribution limits and conversion limits are different things. There is no income limit and no dollar limit on conversions. The $7,500 cap governs new money going in.

Roth versus traditional, briefly

The trade is straightforward: Roth contributions are made with after-tax dollars and grow tax-free, with qualified withdrawals after age 59½ entirely tax-free. Traditional contributions may be deductible now and are taxed on the way out.

Roth tends to win when you expect your tax rate in retirement to be higher than it is today, or when you value the flexibility — Roth IRAs have no required minimum distributions for the original owner, so the money can keep growing untouched, and contributions (as opposed to earnings) can be withdrawn at any time without tax or penalty. That makes a Roth a more flexible emergency backstop than most people realize, though raiding it should still be a last resort.

If the comparison you actually care about is where to park near-term savings rather than retirement money, a CD interest calculator is the more relevant tool — the tradeoff there is liquidity and rate certainty, not tax treatment.

One more deadline detail

You have until the federal tax filing deadline of the following year — typically April 15 — to make a prior-year contribution. For 2026, that means the window stays open into April 2027. The catch-up eligibility opens on January 1 of the year you turn 50, not on your birthday, so someone turning 50 in November 2026 can use the full $1,100 for the entire year.

Related calculators

• Roth IRA Calculator
• CD Interest Calculator