Tool

APC budget calculator

Add the journals you expect to publish in and see the total against each option in the proposed NIH publication cost limit.

Prices checked 23 September 2026

Status: proposed, not policy. The thresholds below come from NIH RFI NOT-OD-25-138, released 30 July 2025. Not finalized as of 23 September 2026. The notice proposed an effective date of 1 January 2026; that date has passed and the notice still lists no related or superseding announcement. This is an arithmetic aid, not budget advice. What was proposed.

Your journals

Up to 10 journals. Start typing a journal or publisher name. 753 of the 1,388 journals here are priced in US dollars; the other 635 can be added to the list but cannot be added to a dollar total. Everything runs in your browser and nothing is saved.

JournalPublisherListed APCArticlesCounts toward total
Total, USD-priced journals only$0

Against each proposed option

OptionAllowableYour totalNot covered

“Allowable” is the per-article limit multiplied by the number of articles you entered, except for the award-level option, which is a single ceiling for the whole award. “Not covered” is what would fall outside it — the amount that would have to come from somewhere other than the grant.

The $3,000 option applies only where the journal pays its reviewers and publishes the reviews. We do not verify that for any journal, so that row is shown for reference only and should not be read as achievable.

What this does not do

It does not convert currencies. A journal priced in CHF, EUR or GBP stays out of the dollar total, because an exchange rate today is not the rate you would be billed at, and a converted figure would look verified when it is not.

It uses list prices — what the publisher quotes before tax, before any waiver, institutional agreement or country-tiered adjustment. If your institution has an agreement with the publisher, your real cost is likely lower. See waivers by country.

It saves nothing. Reload the page and the list is empty.

Related

The proposed NIH limitAll five options, and the statusAt or under $2,000USD-listed journalsAt or under $3,000USD-listed journalsDiamond journalsNo author fee at allWaiver calculatorWhat you pay after a waiverHow we checkMethod

Prices from prices-verified.json (CC BY 4.0), last checked 2026-09-16; thresholds from nih-limits.json, sourced to NOT-OD-25-138.