Percentage Change Calculator
Use our percentage change calculator to calculate percentage change between two numbers instantly. Includes the percent change formula, examples, how to handle percentage change from zero, and tips for calculating percentage change between two numbers in Excel.
What is Percentage Change?
Percentage change measures how much a value increases or decreases relative to its starting (initial) value. It’s commonly used in finance, analytics, pricing, and performance tracking.
If you want to get percentage difference between two numbers, it’s important to distinguish between percentage change (relative to the initial value) and percentage difference (a symmetric comparison). This page focuses on percentage change between two numbers using the standard percent change formula.
This percentage change calculator is especially useful when you’re asking how do I calculate the percent change or how to find the percentage change of two numbers.
Percentage Change Formula
To calculate percentage change between two numbers, subtract the initial value from the final value, divide by the initial value, then multiply by 100.
Positive results mean an increase; negative results mean a decrease.
So the value increased by 25%.
So the value decreased by 25%.
How to Find the Percentage Change of Two Numbers
- 1
Enter the initial value (starting number).
- 2
Enter the final value (ending number).
- 3
Subtract initial from final to find the change.
- 4
Divide the change by the initial value and multiply by 100 to get percentage change.
Frequently Asked Questions
Use % change = ((final - initial) ÷ initial) × 100.
Subtract initial from final, divide by the initial value, then multiply by 100.
That’s percentage change: ((final - initial) ÷ initial) × 100.
Percentage change uses the initial value as the base. A percentage difference calculator between two numbers is usually symmetric (often uses the average of the two values as the base). If you want the standard percent change, use the initial value as the base.
If A1 is initial and B1 is final, use: =(B1-A1)/A1 and format as Percentage. This is the common percent change calculator excel setup.
The standard percent change formula divides by the initial value. If the initial value is 0, the percent change is undefined (division by zero). In practice, you may report the absolute change instead, or use a different metric depending on your context.
Excel uses the same formula: =(new-old)/old. Then format the cell as Percentage.
Rate of change is the same idea (change relative to a baseline). This calculator gives the percent rate of change for one initial and final pair; a graph/table version typically repeats that across multiple time points.
That’s a different calculation than percent change. If you mean “X is what percent of Y?”, the formula is (X ÷ Y) × 100.
If you mean “A is what percent of B?”, compute (A ÷ B) × 100. If you mean “how much did it change?”, use percentage change: ((final - initial) ÷ initial) × 100.