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BrandsHistorical money calculator

ValueThen

Put historical money in perspective.

Compare purchasing power across years and currencies, map how prices moved country by country, follow gold back to 1258 and silver to 1688, and read the source behind every figure.

Open valuethen.comCLI on GitHubSDK on npm
One hundred dollars from August 1970, followed forward, with the sources on screen.
Read the on-screen text

Every line that appears in the film, in order.

  1. August 1970. $100. What does it buy today?
  2. $858.92. $100 in August 1970 buys about as much as $858.92 in August 2026.
  3. ValueThen. What is old money worth today? Type an amount from any year. See what it buys now.
  4. The calculator. Type an amount from any year. See what it buys now. $1,000 from 1970 is $8,589.23 in August 2026.
  5. 153 currencies. Every figure from official statistics.
  6. Gold since 1258. Silver since 1688.
  7. Historical Inflation Map. Borders as they stood, year by year, from 1209 to today.
  8. Official data. World Bank. OECD.
  9. Free, open API. The same figures, as JSON. No key needed.
  10. Seven languages. “What is old money worth today?” in Spanish, Portuguese and the others.
  11. ValueThen. Inflation-adjusted purchasing power, from official statistics. valuethen.com. 153 currencies, gold since 1258, silver since 1688.

Where the figures go

valuethen.com

The calculator and the map

Live

Pick an amount, a currency and two dates, down to the month wherever a country publishes a monthly index. The answer names its series, and when a source does not cover a period, ValueThen says so instead of guessing.

The Historical Inflation Map shades each country by how far its prices moved, and redraws borders as they stood in the year you choose. Historical states are never given a modern currency.

Open valuethen.com
The map in 1970 and, inset, in 1600.

API, npm and MCP

For developers and AI agents

Live

The same figures come back as JSON from a free API, with no key and no sign-up. The valuethen package on npm wraps it in a command-line tool and a small JavaScript SDK, with batches of up to 100 conversions and typed errors that tell you the valid range.

An MCP server and an agent skill let AI assistants convert historical amounts and cite the series they used.

Developer documentation
npx valuethen convert 100 USD 1970
$100.00 in 1970  =  $853.01 in 2026
Price change: +753.0%
Sources: World Bank FP.CPI.TOTL, 2010=100; recent years chained from CPI-U (FRED CPIAUCNS)

# mcp.json
{ "type": "http", "url": "https://api.valuethen.com/mcp" }
Output from the valuethen CLI, as published in its README, and the MCP server entry.

The story

What was a 1970 salary worth? What did a medieval price mean? ValueThen answers with consumer price indices and central-bank exchange rates, at month-level precision wherever a country publishes a monthly index.

Every result names its series. When a source does not cover a period, ValueThen says so instead of inventing a number. Historical places are never assigned a modern currency they did not use.

The same engine is open to developers through a free API, a CLI and SDK on npm, and an MCP server that lets AI assistants answer with the same cited figures.

ValueThen in the news

  1. ValueThen

    ValueThen now compares two places across the same years

    Pick two places and one period, and see how prices changed in each, side by side, with both sources cited.

  2. ValueThen

    ValueThen’s purchasing-power API, now from your terminal

    An open-source CLI and SDK on npm. No API key, no sign-up and no dependencies.