Updated August 6, 2026. Quick answer: a survivor benefit is capped by what the person who died was entitled to, reduced by how early you claim it, and it is a separate entitlement from your own retirement benefit — which is why the order you take them in is worth money. This tool prices all of it from the rules Social Security actually operates by.
The calculator
Their monthly amount at their own full retirement age. On a Social Security statement this is the primary insurance amount.
Leave blank if they never claimed before their full retirement age. This is the field that triggers the RIB-LIM cap below.
60 is the earliest.
67 for most people born in 1962 or later. Check your own Social Security statement — survivor FRA and retirement FRA are not always the same year.
Your own monthly amount at your full retirement age, if you have one. Adding it turns on the sequencing comparison.
The rules it uses, and where they come from
The ceiling. If the person who died never claimed before their own full retirement age, the survivor benefit starts from their full benefit. If they had claimed early, the widow(er)’s limit applies. Social Security’s own manual states it exactly: a widow(er)’s benefit is “limited to the larger of: 82 1/2 percent of the NH’s death PIA, or the reduced RIB or DIB amount to which the NH would have been entitled if they had lived” (POMS RS 00615.320, revised December 14, 2023). Larger of is the part people get backwards — the 82.5% is a floor, not a cap, so a very early-claiming spouse does not drag the survivor benefit below it.
The reduction for claiming early. Survivor benefits can start at age 60, and the maximum total reduction is 28.5% (POMS RS 00615.301, revised December 5, 2023). This tool spreads that reduction evenly across the months between 60 and the survivor full retirement age you enter.
What this tool will not guess at. It asks for your survivor full retirement age instead of working it out from your birth year. Survivor FRA and retirement FRA do not move together for every cohort, and we did not re-verify that table at primary source for this build — so the tool asks rather than assumes. Everything else here is quoted above with its manual section and revision date.
Why the order matters more than the amount
A survivor benefit and your own retirement benefit are two separate entitlements, and survivor benefits are not subject to deemed filing — claiming one does not force you to claim the other. That is what makes sequencing real money: your own benefit keeps growing with delayed retirement credits up to age 70, while the survivor benefit stops growing at your survivor full retirement age.
So the two sequences worth pricing are: take the survivor benefit now and switch to your own at 70, or take your own now and switch to the survivor benefit at your survivor FRA. Enter both amounts above and the tool tells you which is larger today. It cannot tell you which is larger over a lifetime, because that depends on how long you live — and on your health, your other income and your tax bracket, none of which are arithmetic.
The compounding version of this question for a couple who are both still alive is at the widow’s penalty calculator: when one of you dies, the household keeps the larger of the two benefits and loses the smaller, while the survivor often moves into a worse tax bracket. Planning for that is a different decision from this one, and it happens earlier.
What this does not do
It does not handle disabled widow(er)’s benefits before 60, surviving divorced spouses with their own qualifying rules, the earnings test if you claim before your full retirement age while still working, government pension offsets, or the treatment of a deceased spouse who was receiving disability rather than retirement benefits. Each of those changes the answer, and none of them is a footnote. This tool prices the ordinary case honestly and tells you when you are outside it.
Sources are Social Security’s own Program Operations Manual System, cited by section and revision date above. See methodology, editorial policy and corrections — if a rule here goes stale, it gets fixed with the date shown.