GPA Calculator

Your GPA is the single number that summarizes your academic record, so it pays to know exactly where yours stands. This GPA calculator gives you an instant, accurate result for one semester or your entire college or high school career, on either the standard 4.0 scale or a weighted 5.0 scale. Everything runs in your browser, nothing is uploaded, and there is no account to create.

Below the tool you will find the full picture: what a GPA actually measures, the formula behind it, worked examples you can check by hand, and how semester, cumulative, weighted, and unweighted GPAs fit together.

What is a GPA?

GPA stands for grade point average. It converts every letter grade you earn into a number called grade points, weights those numbers by course credit hours, and averages the result into a single figure, usually between 0.0 and 4.0. Colleges use it for admissions and scholarships, high schools use it for class rank, and employers sometimes ask for it on entry-level applications.

The reason GPA exists is comparability. An A in a 4-credit lab and an A in a 1-credit seminar are both excellent, but they represent different amounts of work, so a straight average of percentages would mislead. By weighting grade points with credit hours, a GPA reflects how much learning each grade actually represents.

Most schools report GPA rounded to two decimals, like 3.45 or 3.87. Small differences matter more than they look: the gap between 3.49 and 3.50 can decide scholarship eligibility at schools that publish a cutoff, which is why calculating your GPA precisely, rather than estimating, is worth the minute it takes.

The GPA formula

Every GPA calculation, ours included, uses the same underlying formula. There is no hidden complexity, which means you can verify any result by hand.

Step one is converting each letter grade to its grade point value on the common 4.0 scale: A is 4.0, B is 3.0, C is 2.0, D is 1.0, and F is 0.0, with plus and minus steps in between (A- is 3.7, B+ is 3.3, and so on). Step two is multiplying each value by the course's credit hours to get quality points. Step three is adding up all quality points and all credit hours, then dividing.

Worked example. Suppose one semester looks like this:

• English Composition: A (4.0) × 3 credits = 12.0 quality points
• Calculus I: B+ (3.3) × 4 credits = 13.2 quality points
• US History: A- (3.7) × 3 credits = 11.1 quality points
• Biology Lab: B (3.0) × 4 credits = 12.0 quality points

Total quality points: 12.0 + 13.2 + 11.1 + 12.0 = 48.3. Total credits: 3 + 4 + 3 + 4 = 14. GPA = 48.3 ÷ 14 = 3.45. The tool above produces the same 3.45 when you enter these four courses, and the share link lets you send the full breakdown to anyone who wants to check it.

Notice how the 4-credit courses pull harder than the 3-credit ones: the B+ in Calculus contributes more to the average than the A- in History, because it represents more coursework. That is the credit-hour weighting doing its job.

The 4.0 GPA scale

The table below shows the most widely used grade point conversions. Your school may use a simpler version without plus and minus grades, in which case an A- counts as a straight 4.0, so check your student handbook if your result looks slightly off from your transcript.

Weighted and unweighted GPA

There are two main ways schools compute GPA, and knowing which one you are looking at prevents a lot of confusion. An unweighted GPA uses the 4.0 scale above for every course, no matter how difficult the class was. An A in a regular elective and an A in AP Physics both count as 4.0. The maximum possible unweighted GPA is 4.0.

A weighted GPA rewards course difficulty by adding bonus points, typically +1.0 for AP or IB courses and +0.5 for honors courses, with the scale capped at 5.0. On a weighted scale, a B in AP Calculus (4.0 weighted) equals an A in a regular course, which is why students aiming for competitive colleges often load up on advanced classes.

Which one matters depends on who is reading it. Many colleges recalculate applicants' GPAs on their own unweighted scale to compare students from different high schools fairly, while high schools often use the weighted figure for class rank. Our weighted GPA calculator handles the 5.0 scale with AP and honors bonuses, and the unweighted GPA calculator sticks to the straight 4.0 scale. For a side-by-side comparison, see weighted vs unweighted GPA.

Semester GPA and cumulative GPA

Your semester GPA covers a single term: fall, spring, or one marking period in high school. Your cumulative GPA combines every graded term so far into one running average, weighting each term by its credit hours. Colleges and scholarship committees almost always ask for the cumulative figure.

The two are connected but not interchangeable. A strong semester lifts your cumulative average slowly when you already have many credits banked, because each new term is a smaller slice of the total. Our semester GPA calculator isolates a single term, while the cumulative GPA calculator shows how all your terms combine. The tool at the top of this page can do both: enter one term's courses for a semester figure, or all courses across every term for a cumulative one.

How to use this GPA calculator

Using the tool takes less than a minute. Open the GPA tab, then for each course enter the course name (optional), select your letter grade, enter the credit hours, and mark whether it was an AP, IB, honors, or regular course if you are using the weighted scale. Click + Add course for each additional class, then Calculate GPA.

The result shows your GPA to two decimal places along with total quality points and total credits, so you can see exactly how the number was built. Toggle between Unweighted (4.0) and Weighted at any time to compare both versions of your record side by side. Use Share result to generate a link that replays the calculation, useful for walking a counselor or parent through your numbers.

For a cumulative figure across multiple semesters, enter every course from every term in one go. For a single-term figure, enter just that term's courses. If your school uses a custom scale, for example no plus/minus grades, match the tool's grade selections to your school's conversions and the math will line up.

Do colleges prefer weighted or unweighted GPA?

There is no single answer, because admissions offices handle this differently. Many colleges strip away weighting and recalculate every applicant on a plain 4.0 scale, since weighting systems vary so much between high schools that the weighted numbers are not directly comparable. In that process, the rigor of your courses still matters, but it is evaluated separately, through the transcript itself rather than the GPA number.

Other schools, particularly large public universities with formula-driven admissions, may take the weighted GPA at face value. The practical takeaway: keep both numbers handy. Report whichever figure your application asks for, and if it asks for one without specifying, the unweighted GPA on a 4.0 scale is the safer default because it is the most universally understood.

One more note for high school students: class rank, where your school publishes it, is usually computed from the weighted GPA, since rank is meant to reward students who challenged themselves. If your school does not rank, the weighted number matters less and the unweighted one carries more weight in comparisons.

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