GPA Calculator
Add your courses with their credit hours and grades to get this semester's GPA. Add your previous GPA and credit hours too, and it works out your cumulative GPA in the same pass — no sign-up, nothing sent anywhere.
Your Results
Semester GPA
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Cumulative GPA
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Credits this semester
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Total credits overall
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What This GPA Calculator Does
A GPA calculator turns a list of courses, credit hours and letter grades into one number: your grade point average. Enter each course, pick the grade you earned, and the tool multiplies grade points by credit hours behind the scenes so heavier courses count for more — the way every registrar's office actually calculates it.
Two numbers come out. Your semester GPA covers only the courses you just entered. Your cumulative GPA folds in your prior GPA and credit hours as well, so it reflects your entire academic record rather than one term in isolation. If you only care about the semester in front of you, leave the "previous GPA" fields blank and the two numbers will match.
Everything runs in your browser — nothing you type is sent anywhere or stored. Looking for a running cumulative total across every year rather than one semester at a time? The CGPA calculator is built for exactly that.
How to Calculate GPA, Step by Step
Every GPA is built from the same three steps, regardless of how many courses you're averaging.
- Convert each letter grade to grade points. On the standard 4.0 scale, A is 4.0, B is 3.0, C is 2.0, and so on down to F at 0.0 — the full table is below.
- Multiply grade points by credit hours for each course. This gives you that course's quality points. A 4-credit B (3.0) is worth 12 quality points; a 1-credit A is only worth 4.
- Add up all the quality points, then divide by total credit hours. That result is your GPA.
A worked example — four courses in one semester:
- English (3 credits, grade A = 4.0) → 3 × 4.0 = 12.0 quality points
- Biology (4 credits, grade B+ = 3.33) → 4 × 3.33 = 13.32 quality points
- Calculus (3 credits, grade B = 3.0) → 3 × 3.0 = 9.0 quality points
- History (3 credits, grade A- = 3.67) → 3 × 3.67 = 11.01 quality points
Total: 13 credit hours, 45.33 quality points. GPA = 45.33 ÷ 13 = 3.49.
Notice that Biology, the heaviest course at 4 credits, pulls more weight on the final number than the 3-credit courses even though its grade was lower than English's. That's the entire reason GPA is a credit-weighted average and not a simple average of your grades.
The 4.0 GPA Scale
This calculator uses the standard US plus/minus 4.0 scale, the one most colleges and high schools default to. Some schools skip the plus/minus grades entirely and just use whole letters (A, B, C, D, F) — if yours does, pick the plain letter and ignore the +/- options.
| Letter grade | Grade points | Typical percentage |
|---|---|---|
| A+ / A | 4.00 | 93–100% |
| A- | 3.67 | 90–92% |
| B+ | 3.33 | 87–89% |
| B | 3.00 | 83–86% |
| B- | 2.67 | 80–82% |
| C+ | 2.33 | 77–79% |
| C | 2.00 | 73–76% |
| C- | 1.67 | 70–72% |
| D+ | 1.33 | 67–69% |
| D | 1.00 | 60–66% |
| F | 0.00 | Below 60% |
Percentage bands vary by school and are shown here as a common reference, not a fixed standard — check your syllabus or registrar for the exact cutoffs your grades were assigned on.
Weighted GPA: AP, Honors and IB Classes
Most US high schools give an extra point of credit for the extra difficulty of Advanced Placement, Honors and International Baccalaureate courses — an A in AP Biology counts for more than an A in standard Biology. Turn on "Include AP, Honors or IB classes" above and tick the box on any course that qualifies; the calculator adds the standard +1.0 bump to that course's grade points before multiplying by credit hours.
This is why the same transcript can show two different GPAs: an unweighted GPA that caps at 4.0 and treats every class the same, and a weighted GPA that can run past 4.0 or even 5.0 for a student carrying a heavy AP/IB course load. Colleges that recalculate applicants' GPAs on their own scale usually start from the unweighted number, so both figures are worth knowing. For a calculator built specifically around this distinction, see the Weighted GPA Calculator.
How the Cumulative GPA Fields Work
Your school's portal shows your GPA and your total credit hours, but it doesn't hand you your running total of quality points — the number this calculator actually needs to combine old and new results. The fix is simple: quality points are just GPA multiplied by credits, so entering your previous GPA and previous credit hours lets the calculator rebuild that missing number for you.
Say your GPA is 3.4 after 60 credit hours, and this semester you earn 45.33 quality points across 13 new credits (the example above):
- Previous quality points: 3.4 × 60 = 204.0
- Combined quality points: 204.0 + 45.33 = 249.33
- Combined credit hours: 60 + 13 = 73
- New cumulative GPA: 249.33 ÷ 73 = 3.42
A single strong or weak semester moves the cumulative number less the more credits you've already banked — which is exactly why one bad semester early on is easier to recover from than one late in a degree.
Common GPA Calculation Mistakes
- Averaging the grades instead of the quality points — a straight average of 4.0, 3.0 and 2.0 gives 3.0, but if the 2.0 course was 4 credits and the others were 1 credit each, the real GPA is closer to 2.4. Credit hours have to be in the multiplication.
- Forgetting to include a repeated course correctly — many schools only count the higher (or only the most recent) attempt in GPA, not both. Check your school's repeat policy before entering a retaken class twice.
- Mixing a weighted number into an unweighted calculation — if a transcript already shows a weighted GPA, re-entering it as "previous GPA" without turning on the weighted toggle will understate your new combined GPA.
- Using the wrong percentage-to-letter cutoffs — the table above is a common default, not universal. A school with a stricter curve might set a B+ at 88% instead of 87%.
- Treating Pass/Fail courses as graded credit — most schools exclude Pass/Fail coursework from the GPA calculation entirely rather than counting a Pass as any specific grade point.
More Grade Calculators
- CGPA calculator A running cumulative GPA across every semester you've completed
- Weighted GPA calculator Compare weighted and unweighted GPA side by side
- High school GPA calculator Sized around year-long and semester-long high school credits
- College GPA calculator Sized around college credit hours and semester terms
- Semester GPA calculator Just this term's GPA, without the cumulative rollup
- GPA scale converter Convert a percentage or 10-point CGPA to the 4.0 scale
- GPA predictor calculator What GPA you need on your remaining credits to hit a goal
- UK GPA calculator Convert a UK percentage or degree classification to US GPA
- LSAC GPA calculator Law school GPA, counting every course attempt including repeats
- Pre-health GPA calculator Science (BCPM) and overall GPA for AMCAS/AACOMAS/AADSAS
GPA Guides
- GPA chart Look up any percentage, letter grade or GPA value directly
- What is a good GPA? Benchmarks by high school, college and grad school
- How to raise your GPA The real math behind GPA recovery
- GPA and class rank How rank is derived from GPA, and where they diverge
- University GPA calculators A–Z A calculator pre-labeled for your own school
Frequently Asked Questions
How do you calculate GPA?
Multiply each course's credit hours by the grade points for the letter grade you earned, add those up to get total quality points, then divide by the total credit hours. A 3-credit A (4.0) is 12 quality points; add every course's quality points and divide by total credits for your GPA.
What is the difference between semester GPA and cumulative GPA?
Semester GPA covers only the courses you took in one term. Cumulative GPA (CGPA) rolls every term together — this calculator does that by combining your previous GPA and credit hours with the new courses you enter.
What GPA scale does this calculator use?
The standard US 4.0 scale: A/A+ = 4.0, A- = 3.67, B+ = 3.33, B = 3.0, B- = 2.67, C+ = 2.33, C = 2.0, C- = 1.67, D+ = 1.33, D = 1.0, F = 0.0.
Does this calculator handle weighted GPA for AP or Honors classes?
Yes — turn on "Include AP, Honors or IB classes" and tick the box next to any weighted course. The calculator adds the standard 1.0-point bump used by most US high schools on top of the letter grade's normal value.
Why do I need my previous GPA and credit hours?
Your school doesn't store a running total of quality points anywhere you can see — only your GPA and total credits. Multiplying those back together recovers your prior quality points, which is what makes an accurate cumulative GPA possible without re-entering every past course.