SSI payment 2027 is $1,029 a month: official amounts

Supplemental Security Income has paid a federal monthly rate below $1,000 for every year of its history — the individual rate for 2026 is $994, itself a new high after decades of increases that never quite reached the four-figure mark. That changed for 2027, under a mechanism that leaves very little to guesswork. Section 1617 of the Social Security Act ties SSI’s federal benefit rates to the same COLA that adjusts Social Security checks, and now that the percentage is final, 3.6%, the official amounts are in. (The “1027” in this page’s web address is the figure we projected before the announcement, at a 3.4% COLA; the address stays so existing links keep working, and the official figure is $1,029.)

The short answer: the individual federal SSI payment rises from $994 a month in 2026 to $1,029 in 2027, the first time in the program’s history that figure has cleared $1,000. The Social Security Administration announced the 3.6% COLA that produces it on October 14, 2026, and published the formal amounts in Federal Register document 2026-21796. Before the announcement we projected $1,027 at a 3.4% COLA, inside a band of $1,025 to $1,028. The projection missed by a small margin: the real COLA was above the top of our band, and the real rate is $1 above the top of our range.

The mechanism behind the number: section 1617

The reason the 2027 SSI rate could be projected this precisely, rather than guessed at, is that it isn’t set by a separate decision at all. Section 1617 of the Social Security Act, codified at 42 U.S.C. 1382f, raises the federal SSI benefit rates by the same percentage as the Social Security cost-of-living adjustment, effective every January. The Social Security Administration doesn’t apply that percentage to last year’s rounded monthly check. Its own notices describe the procedure applied to the yearly unrounded amounts carried over from the prior year: the COLA percentage is applied to those unrounded figures, each result is rounded down to the next lower multiple of $12 when it isn’t already one, and the rounded annual figure is divided by 12 to produce the new monthly rate. That two-step rounding — first to a multiple of $12, then a division by 12 that always lands on a whole dollar — is why SSI’s monthly increases sometimes look a little uneven next to a clean COLA percentage.

The procedure is laid out in SSA’s Federal Register notices, “Cost-of-Living Increase and Other Determinations for 2026,” published November 3, 2025, and the 2027 notice, document 2026-21796. The 2026 notice’s own numbers are the best evidence the mechanism works exactly as described, which is why this page checked them before trusting the same method for 2027.

Checking the method against 2026

The 2026 COLA came in at 2.8%. Starting from the unrounded 2025 yearly amounts the notice reports — $11,604.53 for an individual, $17,404.87 for a couple, and $5,815.57 for the essential person rate — multiplying each by 1.028 and rounding down to the next lower multiple of $12 should reproduce the 2026 figures SSA actually published.

All three land exactly on the 2026 monthly rates SSA published: $994, $1,491, and $498. Three for three, using nothing but the notice’s own unrounded base figures and the statutory rounding rule. That’s the same arithmetic this page ran forward one more year, starting from the 2026 unrounded figures instead of the 2025 ones.

The 2027 amounts, COLA scenario by scenario

Before the announcement, this page applied the same section 1617 arithmetic to seven scenarios from 3.0% to 3.6%, each showing the individual figure’s full path from unrounded annual amount through rounding to the monthly check, alongside the resulting couple and essential person rates. The table is kept as published, and the official COLA of 3.6% is the last row: the SSA’s own annual amounts are $12,358.92 unrounded for an individual, $18,536.33 for a couple and $6,193.63 for an essential person, rounded down to $12,348, $18,528 and $6,192.

At the official 3.6%, the couple figure works out to an unrounded annual amount of $18,536.33, which rounds down to $18,528 and divides to $1,544 a month. At our 3.4% central estimate it would have been $18,500.55, rounded to $18,492 and $1,541 a month. That combined amount is split equally between the two spouses, not paid as a single household check.

What we projected versus what happened

The COLA formula compares the average Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W) across July, August, and September of 2026 against the same three-month average for 2025, 317.265, and rounds the resulting percentage change to the nearest tenth of a point. After July (327.104) and August (328.481) we centered on 3.4%, which gave an individual rate of $1,027, with a working band of 3.2% to 3.5%, which gave $1,025 to $1,028. The September reading, 330.654, brought the third-quarter average to 328.746, a 3.62% increase that rounds to 3.6%.

That is above our band. The method was right, and the table above shows the 3.6% row, but the central estimate assumed a quieter September than the one that arrived: the index rose 0.66% from August instead of the roughly 0.2% or less that estimate allowed for. For SSI the cost of the miss was one dollar a month on the individual rate. Finbarrow’s 2027 Social Security COLA tracker has the full CPI-W arithmetic and the same verdict for the Social Security side.

The $1,000 threshold isn’t really in question

Buried inside that range is a threshold that doesn’t depend on exactly where the September number lands. The 2026 individual federal benefit rate is $994 a month. Crossing $1,000 for the first time in the program’s history only required a COLA of roughly 0.7% or more, and the 3.6% that arrived clears it by a wide margin. 2027 is therefore the first year an SSI recipient’s federal check reads four digits.

One qualifier matters here: this is the federal benefit rate, the amount set by section 1617 and paid nationwide. Many states add a supplement on top of it, and those supplements vary by state, so an individual recipient’s actual check can already be above $1,000 today depending on where they live, or can be higher still in 2027 than the federal figure alone suggests. The $1,029 official figure in this piece is the federal rate, not necessarily the total deposit.

When the new rate actually shows up in a bank account

SSI works differently from Social Security retirement and disability benefits when it comes to timing. The SSA’s October 14 announcement says increased payments to about 7.3 million people receiving SSI will begin on December 31, 2026. It pays for the current month, normally on the 1st of that month, and when the 1st falls on a Saturday, Sunday, or federal holiday, the payment moves to the last business day before it. January 1, 2027 is both a Friday and a federal holiday, New Year’s Day, so the January 2027 SSI payment — the first one to carry the new 2027 rate — is paid Thursday, December 31, 2026. There is no SSI payment dated in January 2027 at all; instead, December 2026 carries two deposits, one on December 1 at the still-current 2026 rate and one on December 31 at the new 2027 rate covering January.

That pattern recurs later in the year and again at the very end of 2027, whenever the 1st of a month lands on a weekend.

May 1, 2027 falls on a Saturday, so that payment moves back to Friday, April 30. August 1, 2027 falls on a Sunday, moving that payment to Friday, July 30. And the same holiday mechanic that produces the December 31, 2026 payment repeats at the end of 2027: January 1, 2028 is a Saturday, and federal offices observe New Year’s Day on Friday, December 31, 2027, so the January 2028 payment, at whatever the 2028 rate turns out to be, lands on Thursday, December 30, 2027 — giving December 2027 two payments as well, on December 1 and December 30. The practical advice cuts the same way both times: treat the late-December deposit as the following January’s money, not as a bonus December payment, since it has to stretch across the same number of days either way. For how this same holiday shift plays out on the Social Security side of the calendar, which runs on different rules again, see the first 2027 COLA payment date.

Income limits move with the benefit rate; resource limits don’t

Two separate sets of numbers gate SSI eligibility, and only one of them changes with the COLA. The income limits are built directly from the federal benefit rate. For someone with unearned income only, SSA’s formula adds the $20 general income exclusion to the FBR: that limit is $1,014 in 2026 and $1,049 in 2027 ($1,029 plus $20). For someone with earned income only, the formula doubles the FBR and adds both the $65 earned income exclusion and the $20 general exclusion: $2,073 in 2026 and $2,143 in 2027 (2 × $1,029 + $65 + $20). The couple versions, on the same formulas, are $1,564 for unearned income only and $3,173 for earned income only. Both the $20 and $65 exclusions come from 42 U.S.C. 1382a(b), and neither one is indexed to inflation — they’ve stayed fixed while the benefit rate around them has risen, which is exactly why the income limits move even though those two exclusion amounts don’t.

The resource limits are a different statute entirely, 42 U.S.C. 1382(a)(3), and they don’t move at all: $2,000 for an individual and $3,000 for a couple, unchanged in 2027 as in recent years, because Congress has never written an inflation adjustment into that provision. A fuller set of the figures that move alongside SSI and Social Security for 2027 — substantial gainful activity, the work credit amount, the earnings test thresholds — is tracked separately on finbarrow’s 2027 Social Security figures tracker.

Someone receiving both Social Security and SSI: the raise doesn’t stack

A meaningful share of SSI recipients also receive a Social Security benefit, and for them the 2027 increase doesn’t simply add up the way it might look at first glance. Social Security counts as unearned income for SSI purposes, reduced by the same $20 general exclusion before it offsets the SSI payment dollar for dollar. Take someone with a steady $600 monthly Social Security benefit in 2026: after the $20 exclusion, $580 counts against SSI, so the SSI payment is $994 minus $580, or $414, for a combined total of $1,014 a month.

In 2027, at the official 3.6% COLA, that Social Security benefit rises to $621 — $600 times 1.036 is $621.60, and Social Security rounds the resulting monthly payment down to a whole dollar. After the same $20 exclusion, $601 counts against SSI, so the SSI payment becomes $1,029 minus $601, or $428, for a combined total of $1,049.

The combined total rises by $35 — exactly the increase in the federal SSI benefit rate itself, not 3.6% of the $1,014 combined figure. The intuition is straightforward once the offset is visible: the Social Security raise is mostly absorbed, dollar for dollar, by a lower SSI payment, so the net gain for someone on both programs tracks the SSI rate increase rather than the headline COLA percentage. It’s a similar lesson, with a different mechanism, to how the 2027 COLA’s net increase after Medicare can also end up smaller than the announced percentage suggests once another deduction is factored in.

Other dollar figures riding the same COLA

Section 1617 and the formulas built on top of it touch a few other SSA figures beyond the headline SSI rates, and the official 3.6% carries through to each of them. Title VIII special veterans benefits, a smaller program for certain veterans living abroad, are set at 75% of the individual SSI federal benefit rate: $745.50 in 2026 and $771.75 in 2027 (75% of $1,029). Our earlier 3.4% projection was $770.25.

The student earned income exclusion, which lets a student under 22 exclude part of their earnings from the SSI income calculation, runs on the same cost-of-living mechanism but rounds to the nearest $10 instead of down to a multiple of $12. Its unrounded 2026 base is $2,413.64 a month and $9,729.33 a year, which round to the published 2026 figures of $2,410 a month and $9,730 a year. For 2027 the official exclusion is $2,500 a month and $10,080 a year. Our 3.4% projection had the same $2,500 monthly figure but a yearly maximum of $10,060, so only the yearly figure was off.

The calendar from here

The amounts are official. The Social Security Administration announced the COLA and the new SSI federal benefit rates on October 14, 2026, the same morning the Bureau of Labor Statistics published the September CPI-W reading, and the formal Federal Register notice, document 2026-21796, was placed on public inspection on October 23 and was published October 26. The first payment at the new rate is the one dated December 31, 2026. The CPI-W data behind the percentage is in finbarrow’s 2027 Social Security COLA tracker.

Sources

• SSA notice, “Cost-of-Living Increase and Other Determinations for 2027,” Federal Register document 2026-21796 — federalregister.gov/d/2026-21796
• SSA press release, “Social Security Announces 3.6 Percent Benefit Increase for 2027,” October 14, 2026 — ssa.gov/news/en/press/releases/2026-10-14.html
• SSA notice, “Cost-of-Living Increase and Other Determinations for 2026,” 90 FR 49047, Federal Register, November 3, 2025 — federalregister.gov/documents/2025/11/03/2025-19763
• SSA, “Schedule of Social Security Benefit Payments 2027,” Publication No. 05-10031 — ssa.gov/pubs/EN-05-10031-2027.pdf
• 42 U.S.C. § 1382f — law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/1382f
• 42 U.S.C. § 1382a — law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/1382a
• 42 U.S.C. § 1382 — law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/1382
• 20 CFR § 416.1112 — law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/20/416.1112
• finbarrow, 2027 Social Security COLA tracker — companion page for the CPI-W data behind the COLA