How Much Will I Get on SSDI? Formula and Estimates

Your SSDI payment is based on your lifetime earnings, not on your condition or your financial need. Social Security averages your highest-earning years, adjusted for wage growth, and runs the result through a formula that replaces a larger share of income for lower earners. The average disabled worker received $1,642 a month before the 2027 cost-of-living increase, and about $1,701 after the 3.6% raise that takes effect with January 2027 payments.

Someone who earned around $60,000 a year for most of a career would receive roughly $2,345 a month under the 2026 formula, and about $2,430 from January 2027. Your own figure is in your my Social Security account, under “More Benefits” after you sign in, and the estimator below shows how the formula treats your earnings.

How Social Security calculates your SSDI

The calculation has two steps. First, Social Security finds your average indexed monthly earnings (AIME). It takes your earnings for each year from age 22 up to the year before you became disabled, counting only earnings up to that year’s Social Security tax cap, and adjusts older years for the growth in average wages up to the second year before you became disabled. It then averages your highest years and divides by 12.

Second, it applies the benefit formula for the year you first became eligible. For eligibility in 2026, your primary insurance amount is 90% of the first $1,286 of your AIME, plus 32% of the amount between $1,286 and $7,749, plus 15% of anything above $7,749 (for eligibility in 2027, the amounts are $1,340 and $8,077), rounded down to the nearest dime. Your SSDI benefit is that full amount, with no reduction for age, because a disabled worker is paid what they would receive at full retirement age.

For an AIME of $5,000, for example, the formula gives 90% of $1,286, which is $1,157.40, plus 32% of $3,714, which is $1,188.48, for a total of $2,345.80.

Why younger workers are not penalized

A retirement benefit averages your 35 highest years, which would leave a young worker with many zeros. SSDI uses fewer years. Social Security counts your elapsed years, from age 22 to the year before your disability, drops one year for every five elapsed, up to five, and averages only the rest, with a minimum of two years. Someone disabled at 45, who turned 22 in 2003, has 23 elapsed years; dropping four leaves 19 years in the average, all of them the best ones.

If you had fewer than three dropout years and spent years caring for a child under 3 with no earnings, those years can also be dropped, up to three dropout years in total. Qualifying in the first place depends on separate work credit rules by age.

Estimates by salary

These figures assume steady earnings at about the same level, adjusted for wage growth, through most of your working life, and disability beginning in 2026:

The pattern shows how the formula works: someone earning $25,000 gets back about 68% of monthly pay, someone earning $100,000 about 40%. Real records rarely look this tidy. Years of part-time work, unemployment or caregiving lower the average, and a strong final decade can raise it.

You may see claims that SSDI pays up to $4,152 a month in 2026. That figure is the maximum retirement benefit for a worker retiring at full retirement age with maximum earnings, and it rises to $4,188 in 2027; it is not a special SSDI ceiling, and very few disabled workers come close to it.

Benefits for your family

Your spouse and children can receive benefits on your record: generally children under 18, or 19 if still in high school, a spouse caring for your child under 16, and adult children disabled before 22. Each can receive up to half of your benefit, but the total for the family is capped. For disability, the family maximum is the smaller of 85% of your AIME or 150% of your own benefit, and never less than your benefit. In August 2026, children of disabled workers received $529.79 a month on average.

What can lower your monthly payment

Several things reduce what reaches your bank account:

• Medicare Part B. Once Medicare starts, two years after your entitlement, the Part B premium, $202.90 a month in 2026, is usually deducted from your benefit.
• Workers’ compensation and public disability benefits. If the total with your family’s SSDI is more than 80% of your average earnings before you became disabled, SSDI is reduced.
• Overpayment recovery, garnishment for debts the law allows, and federal tax withholding you chose.
• Working above the earnings limits after your trial work period.

Private long-term disability insurance does not reduce SSDI, although the insurer usually reduces its own payment.

Why your award may differ from your estimate

Your online estimate assumes you became disabled now. Your award uses the onset date Social Security finds, which changes the years counted, the indexing year and the formula year. Your most recent earnings may not be on your record yet, and an offset or Medicare premium can lower the payment. If your award letter looks wrong, compare the earnings it lists with your W-2s or tax returns; a missing year is the most common fixable error. You have 60 days to appeal the decision if the onset date or the computation is wrong, which also changes your back pay for the months before your first regular payment.

If your SSDI is small

If your SSDI is less than $1,014 a month in 2026, $1,049 in 2027, and your savings are under $2,000, you may also qualify for SSI on top of SSDI to bring your income up to the federal benefit rate, which rises from $994 to $1,029 a month in 2027. Your benefit also rises every year with the cost-of-living adjustment, 3.6% for 2027, and converts to the same amount in retirement benefits at full retirement age, one of the basic features of SSDI.