Your EBT balance is about to look different this fall, and for most of the country, it’s finally moving in the right direction. Starting October 1, 2026, the maximum monthly SNAP benefit is going up automatically. You don’t have to reapply, call your caseworker, or do anything at all to get it.
A one-person household in the 48 contiguous states and Washington, D.C. will see the maximum rise from $298 to $306 a month. A family of four goes from $994 to $1,023, and a household of eight moves from $1,789 to $1,841.
It’s not a life-changing jump if you’re the one actually filling the cart, and grocery prices haven’t exactly stood still this year either. But a few extra dollars a month matters when a benefit barely stretches through the last week before it reloads.
Not everyone is getting more. Hawaii’s maximum benefit is dropping this year, the only place in the country where that’s happening.
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What the new maximum benefits look like
The figures above cover the 48 contiguous states and D.C., and they scale up with household size. Two people move from $546 to $562, three from $785 to $808, five from $1,183 to $1,217, six from $1,421 to $1,463, and seven from $1,571 to $1,616.
Every additional person past eight adds $225 a month, up from $218 the year before, until the household reaches 18 people or more. At that point the total caps out at $3,887 no matter how many extra mouths there are to feed. The minimum benefit, what a one- or two-person household gets even if the income formula technically zeroes them out, rises from $24 to $25.
These numbers hold from October 1, 2026 through September 30, 2027. SNAP, short for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, recalculates all of it again next summer using the following June’s grocery prices.
Why your actual benefit is probably lower than the maximum
These figures are ceilings, not what most households actually collect. The program assumes every household can put roughly 30 percent of its own net income toward food, so that share gets subtracted from the maximum for your household size to land on your real monthly amount. Zero net income means you get the full maximum. Any earnings at all, and you get less.
That’s why the typical payment sits well below the headline numbers. Over the past year, the average recipient collected about $191 a month, and the average household took home closer to $354. Roughly 39.7 million people were enrolled in a given month during that stretch.
So the October increase won’t land the same way for every household. If your income, rent, or household size has changed recently, this is a reasonable moment to ask your caseworker for a recalculation rather than assuming the new maximum applies to you directly.
Alaska, Guam, and the Virgin Islands are getting bigger increases
Alaska splits its benefit into three zones, urban, Rural 1, and Rural 2, because shipping food into remote communities costs far more than buying it in Anchorage. A single person in urban Alaska goes from $385 to $392, while someone in a Rural 2 community moves from $598 to $608. For a family of four, the range across the three zones runs from $1,306 in urban areas up to $2,027 in Rural 2, the highest maximum benefit anywhere in the country.
Guam and the U.S. Virgin Islands run their own separate tables too, reflecting how much of their food gets shipped in from the mainland. A family of four in Guam moves from $1,465 to $1,507, and the same size household in the Virgin Islands goes from $1,278 to $1,315.
If you live in one of these territories, don’t use the 48-states numbers to estimate your own benefit. Your local office applies its own table, and the difference from the mainland figure can run into the hundreds of dollars.
Hawaii’s benefit is moving the other way
Hawaii is the one place where the new numbers go down instead of up. The maximum for a single person drops from $506 to $496, and a family of four falls from $1,689 to $1,655, a reduction of $34 a month. An eight-person household loses even more, dropping from $3,040 to $2,979. The state’s minimum benefit is falling too, from $41 to $40.
This isn’t a policy decision aimed at Hawaii specifically. The maximum benefit for every state and territory is tied to the cost of a standard grocery basket priced each June, and this year Hawaii’s local food costs came in lower relative to the year before. When the input drops, so does the output, even in a state where the cost of living stays high overall.
If you’re one of the households affected, the change still takes effect October 1, alongside every other state’s increase, whether or not anything about your income or household changed.
The income limits and deductions are shifting too
The new figures don’t just move the benefit ceiling, they reset who qualifies in the first place. For a family of four in the 48 states and D.C., the gross monthly income limit climbs to $3,575 and the net income limit rises to $2,750. Every household size moves up by a similar margin, so someone who was turned away in September for earning slightly too much could clear the bar once the new limits start.
The deductions used to calculate an actual benefit are rising as well. The standard deduction for one-, two-, and three-person households climbs from $209 to $217 a month. The cap on the excess shelter deduction, which covers rent or mortgage costs above a set share of income, rises from $744 to $769. The maximum deduction for households claiming homeless shelter costs moves from $198.99 to $205.66.
Asset limits stay flat at $3,000 for most households, but if anyone in your home is 60 or older or has a disability, that limit climbs from $4,500 to $4,750.
None of this changes how a benefit gets calculated, it just resets the numbers that go into the calculation. If you want to know exactly where your household lands, your state’s SNAP office can run the new figures for you starting October 1.
