Work out your zakat

The zakat calculator exists because the arithmetic is simple and the inputs are not.

Nisab moves, so it is fetched live

Nisab is the threshold below which no zakat is due. It is defined against gold and against silver, and because both metals have a live price, the threshold in your currency changes constantly.

The calculator pulls today's spot for both and shows you each one, so you can see which threshold you crossed rather than working from a figure somebody quoted in an article three years ago. The two often disagree, and the silver nisab is usually the lower of the pair.

If spot data is unavailable it declines to judge rather than guessing a threshold, which is the correct behaviour for something with a religious consequence attached.

The number itself

Zakat is 2.5% of what your holdings are worth on your zakat date. Not 2.5% of your profit, and not 2.5% of what you put in.

This trips people up constantly, so it is worth stating plainly. If you bought at a loss and your holdings are worth less than you paid, you still owe zakat on the current value. If you are sitting on a large unrealised gain, that gain is part of the value you owe on, whether or not you have sold anything.

Where it gets genuinely harder

Staked tokens, locked tokens and airdrops you have not claimed are not obvious, and they are not covered by the calculator's headline figure. There is a separate article working through those cases, because the answers depend on whether you can actually access the asset on your zakat date.

That question, access rather than ownership, is doing most of the work in those rulings.

In one line: the calculator handles the live threshold and the 2.5%, and the harder cases have their own article.