Tooth fairy calculator

Methodology

This tool runs the Kindhow Scale, version 1.0: a baseline drawn from a named publication, plus a stack of adjustments you select. Each adjustment is tagged sourced when a publication backs that exact figure, and house judgment when the reasoning is ours. There is no third tag, and no line on this site is unlabelled.

The formula

published     $5.84 a tooth, or $7.17 for a first one      (Delta Dental)
  ↳ region     swapped for the regional figure, not scaled  (Delta Dental)
  ↳ first+     regional × the national first-tooth premium   (ours)
  + sibling    their first tooth, carried on CPI-U    (BLS index, our call)
  + last time  what this child got before, as a floor        (ours)
  ─────────────
  = subtotal
  ⌈ wallet ⌉   ceiling to what your bills and coins can build
  + $0 lines   the sibling who got less; a region that jumped
               52% in a year; the twentieth tooth; a gift

The poll everyone quotes, quoted properly

There is exactly one authority on what the tooth fairy pays, and it is a dental insurer: Delta Dental’s Original Tooth Fairy Poll, run every year since 1998. The 2026 wave asked 1,000 parents of children aged 6 to 12 what they left, between 5–15 January 2026, with a margin of error of ±3%. It publishes two national figures and four regional ones, and this calculator uses all six.

The region control swaps the baseline rather than nudging it — the same move our hotel tipping calculator makes when it changes which publication a line is sourced to. There is no percentage applied to a national figure anywhere in this tool, because a percentage would be ours and these four numbers are theirs.

Where the sourced tag stops: a first tooth outside the national figure

Delta Dental prices a first tooth separately and higher — $7.17 against $5.84, because 38% of parents told them they leave extra for it. But that premium is published nationally and only nationally. There is no first-tooth figure for the Midwest.

So three of the four combinations are quotations and one is not. An ordinary tooth, nationally or regionally, is a figure they printed. A first tooth nationally is a figure they printed. A first tooth in a region is their regional average multiplied by their national premium (×1.23), and that multiplication is ours — so the line drops to house judgment even though both numbers going into it came from the same survey on the same day. This is the computed-provenance rule our teacher gift calculator introduced, applied to a combination rather than to a band position.

The rounding step is your wallet

Every other tool on KindHow ends by rounding to something giveable — $5 steps, $10 steps, multiples of 18. This one cannot, because the constraint is not taste. There is a tooth under a pillow, it is half past nine, and the answer has to be makeable from objects that are already in the house.

Every amount you can make from a set of denominations is a multiple of their greatest common divisor, so the resolution is a single ceiling to that step rather than a search: quarters make the step 25¢, dollar bills make it $1, and a $5 bill on its own makes it $5. Tick nothing and the tool refuses to round at all — it shows you $5.84, says you cannot leave it, and waits. The overshoot is its own line in the sum, because a tool that quietly turned $5.84 into $10.00 without mentioning the $4.16 would be doing the thing this site exists not to do.

The older brother or sister

The question behind most searches for this is not really what the average is. It is whether tonight matches what the first child got, because the first child will find out. So the tool takes what you left them for their first tooth and the year you left it, and carries it forward on CPI-U — the same federal index, imported from our reciprocity calculator rather than copied into a second table, with July 2026 as the current period.

The line only ever runs one way. If the older child got more in today’s money, it raises tonight to match. If they got less, it renders at $0 and tells you by how much you are about to out-pay your own precedent — it does not cut the second child’s tooth to a survey figure. That asymmetry is house judgment and we would rather state it than bury it: the index is the BLS’, and the decision that fairness between two children should move a number at all is ours.

How much this figure moves

An honest page about a survey has to say how solid the survey is. This one is not very.

Consumer prices did not fall 20% between 2023 and 2025 and did not rise 17% in the year after. On 1,000 parents at ±3%, most of that is the survey moving rather than the payment. The regional figures are noisier still: the Midwest is published as up 52% in twelve months and the Northeast up 41%, against 3% for the South. Pick a region that jumped more than 25% and the ledger adds a sourced $0 line saying so, using the poll’s own methodology against the poll’s own headline. Over the long run the trend is real: $1.30 in 1998 to $5.84 now, a 349% rise.

The whole childhood

The American Dental Association: “At birth people usually have 20 baby (primary) teeth, which start to come in (erupt) at about 6 months of age.” They shed “at various times throughout childhood” — the ADA prints no timetable for it, so neither do we, and the tool asks you how many have gone rather than guessing from the child’s age.

20 teeth at $5.84 each is $116.80 across a childhood. That total renders in its own card beside the ledger rather than as a line in it, because it answers a different question from tonight’s and mixing the two would put eight years next to one bedtime. It is also the number that actually changes behaviour: a first tooth is an opening bid, not a one-off.

Adjustments — house judgment

The $0 lines

Your older child got less than that, in real terms. The first $0 line on this site that argues with the reader rather than with an invoice, a form or a receipt. It appears when the sibling’s carried-forward amount lands below tonight’s figure, changes nothing, and says by how much — because you should know before the first child works it out, and because we are not going to tell you to pay a child less on the strength of a thousand-parent survey.

That regional figure moved more than 25% in a year. Sourced, and sourced to the same publication as the baseline it is questioning. Delta Dental prints both the headline and the ±3% behind it; only one of those gets repeated.

This is the twentieth one. Set the count to 19 teeth already gone and the tool says that on the ADA’s arithmetic this is the last tooth the fairy will ever collect, that nobody publishes a figure for a last tooth, and that every page giving you one made it up. Tagged house judgment, because the observation is ours.

A gift as well, or instead. 32% of children in the 2026 poll received a physical gift, up from 19% the year before. Delta Dental counts how common that is and prices none of it, so the line reports the prevalence and adds nothing. Choose “instead” and the wallet step switches off entirely: the shops being shut is the only reason it exists, and an object does not have that problem.

What this tool will not do

• It will not tell you what your child’s friends get. The poll is a national and regional average of 1,000 parents. The number that actually matters at your child’s school is the number at your child’s school, and no survey reaches it.
• It will not guess how many teeth have gone. The ADA publishes the count (20) and no shedding timetable, so inferring teeth from a child’s age would be our arithmetic wearing their name. We ask instead.
• It has no view on whether any of this is a good idea. Plenty of households leave a note, a book, or nothing at all, and the poll finds nearly a third now leave an object. There is no line here telling you to be more generous, and the whole-childhood total is offered as information rather than as an argument in either direction.
• It covers the United States only. Delta Dental’s poll is a US survey, its regions are US regions, and CPI-U is a US index. For customs elsewhere — a good many countries send a mouse rather than a fairy — none of these figures apply.

Sources

• Delta Dental — 2026 Original Tooth Fairy Poll: “The Tooth Fairy gives kids a raise” — the 2026 wave: $5.84 per lost tooth, $7.17 for a first tooth, the four regional averages, 38% of parents leaving extra for the first one, and 32% of children receiving a physical gift. Methodology: 1,000 parents of children aged 6 to 12, 5–15 January 2026, ±3%.
• Delta Dental — Original Tooth Fairy Poll (figures and history) — the run of national averages behind the volatility table, and the $1.30 the poll started at in 1998.
• American Dental Association (MouthHealthy) — Eruption Charts — 20 primary teeth, and that they shed at various times throughout childhood rather than on a schedule anyone prints.
• U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics — Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U), U.S. city average, all items — the index behind the sibling carry, at 333.9 in July 2026. Same table our gift reciprocity calculator runs on.

Informational only, not professional advice. The Kindhow Scale is a published model, not a standard, and the lines marked house judgment are our reasoning and nothing more. Delta Dental’s poll measures what parents report leaving; it is not a rate anybody owes. Last reviewed: August 2026. Scale version 1.0. The poll is published every February, so this page’s figures are re-checked then and on the site’s monthly cycle in between.