If you are exploring retirement accounts, a Roth IRA has an obvious appeal: you fund it with money you have already paid tax on, it grows tax-free, and your withdrawals in retirement are tax-free. The catch is a set of income limits. Your income decides whether you can put money into a Roth IRA directly. Your age does not.

For 2026, you can contribute up to $7,500 to a Roth IRA, or $8,600 if you are 50 or older (that includes a $1,100 catch-up). That is a combined limit across every IRA you own, traditional and Roth together, so contributing to both does not double it.

A Roth IRA has other advantages worth knowing before you weigh it against a traditional IRA. You can withdraw your contributions penalty-free at any age. You never have to take required minimum distributions from it during your lifetime, unlike a traditional IRA. And you can keep contributing at any age as long as you have earned income. The same is now true of a traditional IRA: the 2019 SECURE Act removed the old age cap on traditional IRA contributions, so no IRA has an age limit anymore.

Whether a Roth is the right choice depends on your situation. If you are in a high tax bracket now and expect a lower one in retirement, the upfront deduction from a traditional IRA may be worth more than tax-free growth later. And if you are carrying high-interest debt, paying that down can beat funding any retirement account. Talk through your plan with an advisor before you contribute this year.

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Roth IRA income and contribution limits for 2026

The 2026 Roth IRA contribution limit is $7,500, or $8,600 if you are 50 or older by year-end. This is a combined limit for all of your IRAs, so if you split money between a traditional and a Roth IRA, the two together cannot exceed the limit.

On top of the dollar cap, a Roth IRA has income limits. Earn above a certain amount and your contribution shrinks; earn a bit more and you cannot contribute directly at all.

Those limits are based on your modified adjusted gross income (MAGI), which is your adjusted gross income with a few deductions added back: the student loan interest deduction, the foreign earned income and housing exclusions, excluded employer adoption benefits, and any deduction you took for a traditional IRA contribution.

The 2026 figures are higher than 2025 across the board: the contribution limit rose from $7,000, the single phase-out range moved up from $150,000–$165,000, and the joint range moved up from $236,000–$246,000.

The married-filing-jointly range is only $10,000 wide. A raise, a Roth conversion, or a good year for capital gains can move a couple from a full contribution to none in a single tax year, and you often do not know your final MAGI until you file. If your income is anywhere near the top of the range, wait until you have a firm number before contributing, or use the backdoor route described below.

Calculate your reduced Roth contribution

If your MAGI lands between the two thresholds for your filing status, your contribution limit is reduced in proportion to how far into the range you are. Here is the calculation:

1. Start with your 2026 MAGI.
2. Subtract the lower threshold ($153,000 for single filers, $242,000 for joint filers).
3. Divide the result by the width of the range ($15,000 for single filers, $10,000 for joint filers).
4. Multiply that fraction by your maximum contribution limit ($7,500, or $8,600 if 50+).
5. Subtract the result from your maximum contribution limit. Round up to the nearest $10.

Say you are a single filer with a MAGI of $160,500. That puts you $7,500 into the $15,000 range, or halfway through it. Half of $7,500 is $3,750, so your reduced contribution limit is $7,500 minus $3,750, which is $3,750 (or $4,300 if you are 50 or older). One rule most walk-throughs leave out: if the formula produces a figure between $0 and $200, you are allowed to contribute $200 anyway, and any result is rounded up to the next $10.

Earned income limits

Every dollar you contribute to a traditional or Roth IRA has to come from "earned income," meaning money you get from working: wages, salary, bonuses, commissions, tips, or net self-employment income. Alimony, child support, unemployment benefits, and investment income do not count. If you earned less than the contribution limit for the year, your earnings become your limit.

One exception helps single-income households: a spousal IRA. If you file jointly and your spouse has little or no earned income, you can fund an IRA in their name using your earnings, up to the full limit for each of you, as long as your combined earned income covers both contributions.

What if you want a Roth IRA but make too much money?

If you earn too much to contribute to a Roth IRA directly, you can still get money into one through a backdoor Roth IRA. You contribute to a traditional IRA (there is no income limit on that), then convert that traditional IRA to a Roth, paying income tax on any pre-tax dollars and gains you convert.

Here is the part that trips people up: the conversion is only clean if you have no other pre-tax IRA money. Under the pro-rata rule, the IRS looks at all of your traditional, SEP, and SIMPLE IRAs together when you convert, so if you have a large rollover IRA from an old 401(k), a big share of your "backdoor" conversion becomes taxable. People with existing pre-tax IRA balances often roll them into a current employer's 401(k) first to clear the way.

Converting is not always the right move. If the only way to pay the conversion tax is to pull money out of the IRA itself, you are giving up future growth, and a withdrawal before age 59 1/2 triggers a 10% penalty. The five-year rule below also applies to converted amounts. Walk through both sides with an advisor who handles tax planning before you start.

Timing Roth IRA contributions

You have until the tax filing deadline of the following year to make a contribution for a given tax year. Your 2026 Roth IRA contributions, for example, can be made any time through the April 2027 filing deadline, and getting a filing extension does not extend that date.

The combined limit applies across all your IRAs in a tax year. If you put $5,000 into one IRA for 2026, you have $2,500 of room left across any other IRA accounts that year.

Roth IRA five-year rule

Anyone, at any age, can withdraw their Roth IRA contributions at any time without tax or penalty. Earnings are different. To withdraw earnings tax-free, you generally need to be 59 1/2 and have had a Roth IRA open for at least five years. Pull earnings before age 59 1/2 and you usually owe a 10% penalty plus income tax on them.

The five-year clock starts on January 1 of the year of your first Roth IRA contribution, so a contribution made on December 31, 2026 starts the clock as of January 1, 2026. A separate five-year clock applies to each Roth conversion, starting January 1 of the year that conversion happened, which matters if you are doing backdoor conversions close to retirement.

Bottom line

For 2026, you can put up to $7,500 into a Roth IRA ($8,600 at 50 or older) if your income is under the phase-out threshold for your filing status: $153,000 for single filers, $242,000 for joint filers. Above that, your contribution shrinks, then disappears, though the backdoor route stays open at any income. Whether a Roth belongs in your plan at all depends on your tax bracket now versus later, how you are saving elsewhere, and whether that money would do more paying down debt. Your income sets the ceiling; your age never does.

Frequently asked questions

What happens if I contribute to a Roth IRA but my income is too high?

If your income ends up above the Roth IRA limit after you have already contributed, you have made an excess contribution, and it is taxed 6% per year for every year it stays in the account. You can avoid the penalty entirely by withdrawing the excess plus any earnings on it, or recharacterizing it as a traditional IRA contribution, before your tax return due date. This happens fairly often to people whose income jumps late in the year, so check your MAGI before you file.

Can I open a Roth IRA if I make over $200,000?

It depends on your filing status. For 2026, a single filer cannot contribute directly to a Roth IRA once MAGI reaches $168,000, so a single filer earning $200,000 is over the limit. A married couple filing jointly can contribute a reduced amount up to $252,000 of MAGI. Anyone over the limit can still use a backdoor Roth IRA, funding a traditional IRA and converting it.

Is there a traditional IRA income limit?

There is no income limit on contributing to a traditional IRA at any income or, since 2020, at any age. Income only affects whether that contribution is tax-deductible: if you or your spouse are covered by a workplace retirement plan, the deduction phases out over set income ranges. Nondeductible traditional IRA contributions are allowed at any income and are what makes the backdoor Roth work.

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