Food · guide
SNAP benefit amounts: the maximum allotment chart
The chart that took effect on October 1, 2026, next to the one it replaced, with what the numbers mean for an ordinary household.
Checked by Radif Partners · Editorial policy · How we calculate
The maximum SNAP benefit for fiscal year 2027, from October 1, 2026 to September 30, 2027, is $306 a month for one person, $562 for two, $808 for three and $1,023 for four in the 48 states and DC, plus $225 for each person beyond eight. The four-person amount rose by $29, or 2.9%, from $994. Alaska's three zones rose too, to between $1,306 and $2,027 for four, but Hawaii's maximum went down, from $1,689 to $1,655. Only households with no net income receive the maximum: SNAP subtracts 30% of net income from it, so most families get less. Eligible households of one or two receive at least $25. The amounts follow the cost of the Thrifty Food Plan, which the 2025 budget law now limits to inflation updates until a re-evaluation that cannot raise its cost.
Maximum SNAP benefit for your household
Maximum per month, FY 2027
$1,023
| Per person | $256 |
| FY 2026 | $994 |
| Change | +$29 |
Paid only when net income is zero: each dollar of net income lowers the benefit by 30 cents.
The fiscal year 2027 chart
USDA set the new maximum allotments in its cost-of-living memo of August 21, 2026. They apply to benefits for October 2026 through September 2027. The first table compares the 48 states and DC with the year before; the per-person column shows that a larger household gets less per head, because each size is set as a fixed share of the four-person amount, a scale the 2025 law wrote into the statute.
| Household size | FY 2027 | FY 2026 | Change | Per person |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | $306 | $298 | +$8 | $306 |
| 2 | $562 | $546 | +$16 | $281 |
| 3 | $808 | $785 | +$23 | $269 |
| 4 | $1,023 | $994 | +$29 | $256 |
| 5 | $1,217 | $1,183 | +$34 | $243 |
| 6 | $1,463 | $1,421 | +$42 | $244 |
| 7 | $1,616 | $1,571 | +$45 | $231 |
| 8 | $1,841 | $1,789 | +$52 | $230 |
| Each additional person | +$225 | +$218 | +$7 |
From a single person at $306 to four people at $1,023, the amount per person falls from $306 to $256. Beyond eight people each extra member adds $225, which the memo describes as 22 percent of the four-person maximum, and the total for those extra members is capped at twice the four-person maximum. That puts the ceiling at $3,887 for a household of 18 or more in the 48 states and DC.
Alaska and Hawaii
Alaska has three allotment zones, urban, rural 1 and rural 2, and rural 2 carries the highest amounts in the country. Hawaii has a single table. Both moved in opposite directions this year.
| Household size | Alaska urban | Alaska rural 1 | Alaska rural 2 | Hawaii FY 2027 | Hawaii FY 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | $392 | $499 | $608 | $496 | $506 |
| 2 | $718 | $916 | $1,115 | $910 | $929 |
| 3 | $1,032 | $1,316 | $1,602 | $1,307 | $1,334 |
| 4 | $1,306 | $1,666 | $2,027 | $1,655 | $1,689 |
| 5 | $1,555 | $1,982 | $2,413 | $1,969 | $2,010 |
| 6 | $1,868 | $2,382 | $2,900 | $2,367 | $2,415 |
| 7 | $2,064 | $2,632 | $3,204 | $2,615 | $2,668 |
| 8 | $2,352 | $2,999 | $3,650 | $2,979 | $3,040 |
| Each additional person | +$287 | +$366 | +$446 | +$364 | +$371 |
In urban Alaska the four-person maximum went from $1,285 to $1,306, in rural 1 from $1,639 to $1,666, and in rural 2 from $1,995 to $2,027. Per person, a rural 2 household of four can receive up to $507, about twice the $256 available in the 48 states. Hawaii lost $34 for a family of four, and every size fell: one person now gets at most $496 instead of $506. The memo states the decrease without explaining it, as the fiscal year 2026 memo did when Hawaii's amount dropped to $1,689. For a household whose income did not change, the drop in the maximum passes straight into the benefit. It is softened a little by Hawaii's standard deduction, which rose from $295 to $306 for one to four people: $11 less net income is worth about $4 more a month. A family of four with no net income loses the full $34.
The minimum benefit
An eligible household of one or two people never receives less than the minimum, even when the formula gives less or nothing: $25 a month in the 48 states and DC (it was $24), $31, $40 and $49 in the three Alaska zones, and $40 in Hawaii, down from $41. Households of three or more have no minimum, as 7 CFR 273.10(e) provides: if 30% of their net income exceeds the maximum, they receive nothing even though they pass the income tests. A person living alone on $1,500 a month of Social Security with no housing costs in Missouri shows how it works: net income is $1,283, 30% of it is $385, more than the $306 maximum, and yet the payment is $25.
Where the maximum comes from
The maximum allotment is the cost of the Thrifty Food Plan, USDA's model of a low-cost healthy diet, for a reference family of four, scaled to each household size. The 2025 budget law, Public Law 119-21, rewrote that link in section 10101. As the USDA information memo of September 4, 2025 explains, the cost of the plan is now adjusted every October by the change in the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers over the 12 months ending in June; future re-evaluations of the plan cannot increase its cost; the market baskets may be re-evaluated no earlier than October 1, 2027; and the household-size adjustments are now written into the statute. The rise of 2.9% in the four-person maximum this year is that inflation update at work.
Two practical consequences follow. The yearly change will track grocery prices, nothing more, unless Congress acts. And the 25% federal share of administrative costs that began this fiscal year, with state benefit cost sharing planned from fiscal year 2028, does not touch the allotment chart: the maximum stays federal and identical in every one of the 48 states.
What a household near the income line receives
Because the payment shrinks by 30 cents for each dollar of net income, the amount left at the edge of eligibility depends on household size. A family of four whose net income sits exactly on the federal line of $2,750 still receives $198; a family of three at $2,277 receives $124. For one or two people the formula gives $20 or less at the line, and the minimum of $25 takes over. Larger families keep more at the margin: six people on the line of $3,697 get $353. That is why a raise rarely wipes out a large household's benefit at once, while a small household can drop from a few dozen dollars to the minimum with a modest pension increase.
The same arithmetic explains why rent matters so much. Every dollar of shelter deduction lowers net income by a dollar, and so raises the benefit by 30 cents, until the shelter cap of $769 is reached, or without limit for a household with a member 60 or older or disabled.
When the new amounts reach your card
The memo makes the new chart effective on October 1, 2026, so benefits issued for October 2026 already use it; households did not need to reapply or report anything. Your state recomputes your case automatically with the new maximum, the new standard deduction and its own updated utility allowance. If your October amount went down, the cause is usually a change you reported, a new utility allowance, or, in Hawaii, the lower maximum. The memo also sets separate charts for Guam, $1,507 for four, and the U.S. Virgin Islands, $1,315 for four, which this site does not cover in detail.
From the maximum to your amount
Your benefit is the maximum for your household size minus 30% of your net income, rounded. The work is in the net income, which depends on the earned income deduction, the standard deduction, child care, child support, medical costs for older and disabled members, and above all the shelter deduction; each is explained in SNAP deductions. The SNAP calculator applies all of them with your state's utility allowance. If you are not sure you qualify, start with SNAP income limits.