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What the FAFSA will say your family can pay
This runs the published federal need-analysis formula, the same one the FAFSA runs, and shows you every line of the worksheet. It updates as you type because the formula is arithmetic, not an estimate.
Student Aid Index
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Enter your parents' 2025 income to run the formula.
Parents’ income (2025 tax return)
Parents’ assets
The student
This runs the published federal formula on the figures you entered. Your school may also use its own aid form, which can produce a different number. Nothing you type here is uploaded.
How it is computed
A formula, not a guess
The Student Aid Index is defined in Part F of the Higher Education Act, and the Department of Education republishes its five tables every spring in the Federal Register. Your parents’ income has federal tax, payroll tax, a living-expense allowance for your household size, and an employment allowance subtracted from it. Twelve percent of their assets is added. That total runs through a sliding scale from 22 to 47 percent. Your own income above $12,220 adds 50 percent of the excess, and your savings add 20 percent.
Three things changed in 2024-25 that most calculators and most advice online still get wrong. The number of children you have in college no longer reduces the contribution. The state tax allowance was eliminated. Family farms and small businesses are now counted as assets. Each of those can move the result by thousands of dollars.
One more that surprises students: your own savings are assessed at 20 percent while your parents’ are assessed at 12, so money in your name costs you nearly twice as much aid as the same money in theirs.
Once you know your SAI, the useful next question is what each school does with it. Colleges that meet full demonstrated need will cover the gap between their cost and your SAI; most colleges do not. Compare that against real admitted-student data with the chances calculator.
Common questions
Financial aid, answered
What is the Student Aid Index?
The SAI is the number the FAFSA produces to measure what your family can contribute toward one year of college. It replaced the Expected Family Contribution in 2024-25. Colleges subtract it from their cost of attendance to determine your financial need. It is not a bill, and it is not what you will actually pay.
Can the SAI be negative?
Yes. The SAI floor is negative $1,500, where the old EFC stopped at zero. Anything at or below zero qualifies for the maximum Pell Grant, and the negative range exists so schools can tell apart families who all would have shown a zero before.
Does having two kids in college still cut the parent contribution in half?
No, and this is the change that surprises families most. Under the old EFC the parent contribution was divided by the number of children in college at once. FAFSA simplification removed that divisor, so a family with two students in college now sees roughly the same contribution counted against each of them.
Do retirement accounts and my house count as assets?
No. Retirement accounts are not reported at all, and the home you live in is excluded. What does count is cash and savings, investments including real estate you do not live in, and, since 2024-25, the net worth of a family farm or small business, which used to be excluded entirely.
Why does my state not change the result?
The old formula subtracted a state and other tax allowance, so identical families in different states got different numbers. That allowance was eliminated. Your state now only affects Pell Grant thresholds, and only if you live in Alaska or Hawaii, which have their own federal poverty guidelines.
Is this the number my college will use?
It is the number the federal formula produces, which drives Pell Grants and federal loans. Many private colleges also require the CSS Profile and run their own institutional formula, which treats home equity and non-custodial parents differently and can land somewhere else. Use the SAI as your federal baseline.
What Spike does with this
Your SAI is one number. What you actually pay depends on the list.
Spike connects affordability to college strategy: which schools meet full need, which may leave gaps, where merit aid is realistic, and how the list should adjust.
One email when Spike opens. No card, no account. About the waitlist.