GPA Calculator — Free Online Grade Point Average Calculator
Calculate your cumulative GPA by adding courses with credits and grades. Supports 4.0 and 5.0 scales, saves to your browser, and converts percentages to GPA. All calculations happen locally — nothing leaves your browser.
How is GPA calculated? Grade point average is total quality points divided by total credit hours, where each course earns its credit hours multiplied by the point value of its letter grade. On the standard 4.0 scale an A is 4.0, a B is 3.0 and an F is 0.0, so a 3-credit A plus a 4-credit B gives (12 + 12) ÷ 7 = 3.43. Credits act as weights, which is why a heavy course moves the average further than a light one.
How to Use the GPA Calculator
- Pick the grading scale first — Choose 4.0 for a standard unweighted transcript or 5.0 if your school adds a point for AP, IB or honours courses. Switching the scale changes the grade list, so set it before entering courses.
- Add one row per course — Enter the course name, its credit hours and the letter grade. Credit hours matter more than the name — they are the weights in the average, so copy them from your transcript rather than guessing.
- Add every course that counts — Use Add Course for as many rows as you need. For a cumulative GPA include every graded course from every term; for a term GPA include only that term's courses.
- Read the GPA and its parts — The header shows the resulting GPA, total credits and course count, while the stat cards break out total quality points and the average letter grade so you can see where the number comes from.
- Convert a percentage if you have no letter — Type a numeric score into the percentage box to see the 4.0-scale equivalent this tool uses, from 93% and above for a 4.0 down to below 60% for a 0.0.
- Leave the page and come back — Courses are written to your browser's local storage, so the list survives a reload on the same device and browser. Clearing site data removes them.
How GPA Is Calculated
Grade point average is a credit-weighted mean, not a plain average of your grades. Each course produces quality points — its credit hours multiplied by the point value of the grade — and the GPA is the total of those points divided by the total credits attempted:
GPA = Σ(credits × grade points) ÷ Σcredits
A 3-credit course with an A contributes 3 × 4.0 = 12 quality points; a 4-credit course with a B+ contributes 4 × 3.3 = 13.2. Together they give 25.2 quality points over 7 credits, a GPA of 3.60. The weighting is the part students most often get wrong by hand: a poor grade in a 5-credit lab drags the average down far more than the same grade in a 1-credit seminar, and conversely a strong grade in a light course barely moves it.
The 5.0 scale works the same way but adds a point to every grade above F, which is how schools give credit for the extra difficulty of AP, IB or honours classes. That is why a weighted GPA above 4.0 is possible and why weighted and unweighted numbers cannot be compared directly — a 4.2 weighted average and a 3.8 unweighted average may describe the same transcript.
Letter Grade to Grade Point Reference
| Letter grade | 4.0 scale | 5.0 scale (weighted) | Typical percentage |
|---|---|---|---|
| A+ | 4.0 | 5.0 | 97–100% |
| A | 4.0 | 5.0 | 93–96% |
| A− | 3.7 | 4.7 | 90–92% |
| B+ | 3.3 | 4.3 | 87–89% |
| B | 3.0 | 4.0 | 83–86% |
| B− | 2.7 | 3.7 | 80–82% |
| C+ | 2.3 | 3.3 | 77–79% |
| C | 2.0 | 3.0 | 73–76% |
| C− | 1.7 | 2.7 | 70–72% |
| D+ | 1.3 | 2.3 | 67–69% |
| D | 1.0 | 2.0 | 63–66% |
| D− | 0.7 | 1.7 | 60–62% |
| F | 0.0 | 0.0 | Below 60% |
These values are the most widely used convention in United States schools, and they are what this calculator applies. Institutions differ: some do not award A+ above 4.0, some treat every A as 4.0 with no minus grades, and percentage cut-offs vary by department. Check your registrar's published scale before relying on a number for an application, and treat the result here as an estimate.
What Moves Your GPA and What Does Not
Because the denominator is total credits attempted, the average becomes harder to shift as it grows. A student with 12 credits can change their GPA by half a point in one term; a student with 90 credits usually cannot. Working out what a target term would do is straightforward: add the planned courses as extra rows with the grades you expect and watch the cumulative figure move.
- Credit hours are the lever. Raising a grade in a 4-credit course moves the average roughly four times as far as the same rise in a 1-credit course.
- Retakes depend on policy. Some schools replace the original quality points, others average both attempts, and a few keep the first grade on the transcript while excluding it from the GPA.
- Pass/fail and transfer credits often do not count. They can appear on your transcript and satisfy requirements without contributing quality points, so leave them out unless your school includes them.
- Withdrawals usually carry no points and no credits, which means they leave the GPA unchanged rather than helping it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Yes — your courses are saved to your browser's localStorage. They persist between sessions on the same device/browser. No data is sent to any server. Clearing browser data will remove saved courses.
Use the built-in converter. Common mappings: 93-100% = 4.0 (A), 90-92% = 3.7 (A-), 87-89% = 3.3 (B+), 83-86% = 3.0 (B), 80-82% = 2.7 (B-), 77-79% = 2.3 (C+), 73-76% = 2.0 (C).
First convert each percentage to a 4.0 scale grade (A+=4.0, A=4.0, A-=3.7, B+=3.3, B=3.0, etc.), then multiply each grade by its course credits, sum all grade points, and divide by total credits. Use this calculator to enter your courses and see your GPA computed automatically.
An unweighted GPA on the 4.0 scale treats every course the same, so an A is 4.0 whether it was AP Calculus or a study period. A weighted GPA adds a point for designated advanced courses, putting the maximum at 5.0. Colleges frequently recalculate applicants onto their own scale, so send both numbers if your transcript reports both, and never compare a weighted figure with an unweighted one.
Usually, but not always. Institutions differ on whether A+ is worth more than 4.0, whether minus grades exist, how retakes are handled, and whether pass/fail or transfer credits count toward the average. This calculator uses the common United States convention shown in the table above. Treat the result as an estimate for planning and use your registrar's figure for anything official.
There is no single answer, because it depends on how many credits you already have. Rearranged, the target is: needed quality points = (target GPA x total credits after the term) - current quality points. The practical way to see it is to add your planned courses as extra rows with the grades you expect and watch the cumulative number move — the more credits already on your record, the smaller the shift.
An F counts fully: zero quality points, but the credits still land in the denominator, which is why a single failure hurts so much. A withdrawal normally records no grade and no credits, so it leaves the GPA where it was. Incompletes are excluded until they resolve to a grade. Enter failures but leave out withdrawals unless your school records them as an F.
Because the average is over your whole record. Sixty existing credits plus fifteen new ones means the new term is only a fifth of the total, so even a perfect 4.0 term can lift a 3.0 cumulative average by about 0.2. If your figure is not moving as you expect, check that you have entered every prior course — a term GPA and a cumulative GPA are different numbers.
Use Cases
Checking a Term Before Grades Post
A student who knows four of five results enters them with an estimate for the fifth to see whether the term will clear the 3.0 needed to keep a scholarship.
Cumulative GPA for a Grad Application
Applicants enter every graded course from all four years to produce the single cumulative figure most graduate programmes ask for on the form.
Turning Percentage Marks Into a GPA
Students from systems that report only percentages convert each mark to its 4.0 equivalent before filling in a US application that expects letter grades.
Seeing What Honours Courses Are Worth
A high-school student runs the same transcript on both scales to learn how much of their 4.2 weighted average comes from the AP bonus rather than the grades.
Planning Next Term's Course Load
Adding next term's courses as extra rows with expected grades shows whether a heavy lab schedule would push the cumulative average above a graduation threshold.