GPA Calculator
Enter your courses to calculate your grade point average on the standard 4.0 scale. Switch to weighted mode to add the extra points that Honors, AP and IB classes usually earn. Everything runs in your browser — nothing you type is stored or sent anywhere.
How this GPA calculator works
Your grade point average is a credit-weighted average of every course you take. The calculator turns each letter grade into a number of grade points, multiplies those points by the credit hours the course is worth, adds the results together, and then divides by the total number of credit hours. That last step is the part people most often get wrong when they try to work it out by hand: GPA is not a simple average of your grades, because a five-credit course pulls on your average far harder than a one-credit elective. If all of your classes happen to carry the same number of credits, the credit weighting cancels out and the answer is the same as a plain average, which is why many high-school students can safely leave every credit value set to one.
The grade points themselves come from the standard plus/minus 4.0 table used by most U.S. high schools and universities. An A and an A+ are both worth 4.0, an A- is worth 3.7, a B+ is worth 3.3, a B is worth 3.0, and the pattern of subtracting 0.3 for a minus and adding 0.3 for a plus continues down the scale to a D- at 0.7 and an F at 0.0. A handful of schools award a 4.3 for an A+, but the far more common convention — and the one this tool uses — caps the top grade at 4.0, because that is how the overwhelming majority of admissions offices read a transcript.
The grade-point scale this tool uses
| Letter grade | Grade points | Letter grade | Grade points |
|---|---|---|---|
| A+ / A | 4.0 | C | 2.0 |
| A- | 3.7 | C- | 1.7 |
| B+ | 3.3 | D+ | 1.3 |
| B | 3.0 | D | 1.0 |
| B- | 2.7 | D- | 0.7 |
| C+ | 2.3 | F | 0.0 |
Weighted versus unweighted GPA
An unweighted GPA treats every class as equal and can never rise above 4.0, no matter how demanding your schedule is. That simplicity is also its weakness: a student who earns straight A's in the easiest available courses ends up with exactly the same 4.0 as a student who earned those A's in a schedule packed with Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate classes. A weighted GPA exists to close that gap. It adds bonus points to the more rigorous courses so that the extra difficulty is visible in the number itself, which is why a weighted GPA can climb above 4.0.
The most widely used weighting convention, and the one this calculator applies, adds a full point to Advanced Placement and IB courses and half a point to Honors courses. Under that scheme an A in an AP class is worth 5.0 rather than 4.0, and an A in an Honors class is worth 4.5. There is no single national standard, though — some schools weight only AP and IB, some add different amounts, and a few use a 5.0 or even a 6.0 top scale. If your school publishes its own weighting policy, treat the weighted number here as a close, transparent estimate rather than an exact reproduction of your official transcript.
It is worth knowing both figures because the two audiences for your GPA use them differently. Your own school usually reports the weighted number, and it often drives class rank and honor-roll cutoffs. Many colleges, on the other hand, recalculate applicants' GPAs from scratch — frequently stripping the weighting back out, and sometimes counting only core academic subjects such as English, math, science, social studies and foreign language — so that every applicant is compared on the same footing. Knowing your unweighted GPA tells you roughly what those admissions offices will start from, while your weighted GPA reflects how your own school will present you.
Reading your result honestly
A single GPA number is a useful summary, but it hides two things worth watching. The first is trend: an upward slope from a shaky freshman year to a strong junior year reads very differently to an admissions reader than a flat line or a decline, even when the averages match. The second is context, because the rigor of the courses behind the number matters as much as the number itself. That is precisely the gap weighted GPA tries to capture, and it is why comparing your weighted and unweighted figures side by side — as this tool lets you do by flipping the mode toggle — tells you more than either number alone. Use the result as a planning instrument: recalculate after each grading period, model what a particular grade in a particular course would do to your average, and let that inform where you spend your effort.