FIRECalc review
A free web calculator for checking retirement plans against market history dating to 1871.
Reviewed by iTechGuides Editors · Editorial team · Updated Oct 2026
FIRECalc is a free, web-based retirement calculator for people who want to assess whether their savings and spending plans could withstand historical market conditions. Enter a portfolio value, spending, and retirement duration, then examine outcomes across historical periods dating back to 1871. It is aimed at users who want to explore sequence-of-returns risk and compare plan assumptions, rather than receive a forecast of specific future investment returns. Social Security and pension income inputs, future retirement dates, and pre-retirement contributions let users include several retirement-related assumptions in those tests.
Its main strength is the range of variables available for historical sustainability analysis. FIRECalc supports inflation-adjusted and variable spending, portfolio allocations, investment fees, and lump-sum portfolio changes by future year. Users can also compare retirement timing and scenarios, with historical success-rate reporting to show how a plan fared across the periods modeled. This makes it useful for exploring how changing spending or portfolio assumptions affects historical outcomes. The result is a stress-testing tool focused on portfolio sustainability, not a complete view of every part of retirement finances.
FIRECalc is a better fit for historical scenario exploration than for income projection or tax-aware planning: it does not project income, include tax planning, or sync accounts. Its historical success rates describe outcomes across past market sequences, not probabilities of a particular future result. Choose it if you want a free calculator for examining spending, withdrawals, timing, and portfolio assumptions against long market history. Consider another tool if you need tax modeling, projected retirement income, or account-linked planning as part of the same workflow. Its web-only platform is suited to browser-based analysis rather than account-connected management.
FIRECalc pros and cons
- Where it wins
- Tests portfolio sustainability against market data dating to 1871
- Models Social Security, pensions, contributions, and variable spending
- Compares allocations, investment fees, timing, and scenarios
- Where it doesn't
- Does not include tax planning
- Does not project income
- Does not sync accounts
FIRECalc fact sheet, pricing and score →
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