Ten percent. That is the answer Scripture keeps giving, from Abraham in Genesis to Malachi’s temple warning to Jesus in the Gospels. The word itself tells you as much: tithe comes from the Hebrew maaser, which just means “a tenth.” Not a suggestion, not a range, not “give what feels right.” A tenth.
That does not mean the question stops there. People asking “how much should I tithe” usually want to know something more specific: gross or net, before or after tax, what that looks like against their actual paycheck, and what to do when 10% feels out of reach. This page works through all of it.
The tithe percentage is not a modern church tradition someone invented to fund a building fund. It shows up early, and it shows up consistently.
Abraham and Melchizedek (Genesis 14:20). The first tithe in Scripture happens before the Law existed. Abraham returns from rescuing Lot, meets Melchizedek, king of Salem and priest of God Most High, and gives him a tenth of everything he had recovered. No command told him to. He just did it, and the writer of Hebrews later treats this as foundational (Hebrews 7:2).
The Law formalizes it (Leviticus 27:30). Once Israel is a nation with land and harvests, the tithe becomes structured. “A tithe of everything from the land, whether grain from the soil or fruit from the trees, belongs to the Lord; it is holy to the Lord.” Not 5%, not “whatever you can spare.” A tenth, set apart as holy before it is spent on anything else.
Malachi’s confrontation (Malachi 3:10). Centuries later, Israel had drifted from this. Malachi calls it out directly:
“Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this,” says the Lord Almighty, “and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that there will not be room enough to store it.” (Malachi 3:10)
The word “whole” matters. God was not accusing Israel of giving nothing. He was accusing them of giving part of the tithe and keeping the rest. Malachi 3:8 calls this robbery.
Jesus affirms it without loosening it (Matthew 23:23). Jesus criticizes the Pharisees for tithing down to their spice rack, mint, dill, and cumin, while ignoring justice, mercy, and faithfulness. But look at what he does not say. He does not tell them to stop tithing the spices. “You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former.” The tithe stands. It was never meant to replace justice and mercy, but it was never dismissed either.
Paul reframes the posture, not the principle (2 Corinthians 9:7). The New Testament does not repeat “give a tenth” as a line-item command the way Leviticus does. Instead Paul writes, “Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.” This is often read as loosening the number. It is better read as addressing the heart behind the number. The tenth remains the historical, consistent pattern; cheerful and willing is the posture it is supposed to come from.
Old Testament scholars point out that Israel’s law actually describes more than one tithe, which is worth knowing even though it does not change the answer for a Christian today.
Leviticus 27:30 and Numbers 18:21 describe the tithe given to support the Levites, who had no land inheritance of their own. Deuteronomy 14:22-27 describes a second tithe, brought to Jerusalem and eaten there as part of a festival meal before the Lord, a kind of sacred family feast funded by the tithe itself. And every third year, Deuteronomy 14:28-29 describes a tithe set aside for the Levite, the foreigner, the fatherless, and the widow, essentially a welfare tithe.
Some scholars read these as three separate 10% obligations across a rotation of years, which would put Israel’s total giving well above 10% in some years. Others read them as overlapping descriptions of the same basic tithe used for different purposes. Either way, the takeaway for a Christian asking “how much should I tithe” is not that you owe multiple layered tithes. It is that the Old Testament pattern of giving was never stingy, and the tenth was the floor of a much larger culture of provision for worship, feasting, and the poor.
If you just need the number: 10%. Not 10% of your gross minus your rent minus your car payment minus what you have left after Netflix. Ten percent of your income, calculated before you start subtracting your life from it.
The exact base, gross or net, is its own question, and it deserves its own answer. See Gross vs Net Tithing for the full case. Short version here: gross is the more consistent biblical pattern, because firstfruits means first, not “first after the government and the insurance company take theirs.”
Percentages are easy to say and hard to feel. Here is what 10% looks like at three common income levels, broken into weekly and monthly numbers so you can see it against a real budget.
| Annual Income | Monthly Tithe (10%) | Weekly Tithe (10%) |
|---|---|---|
| $40,000 | $333 | $77 |
| $60,000 | $500 | $115 |
| $100,000 | $833 | $192 |
A household making $40,000 a year giving 10% is setting aside about $77 a week. A household at $100,000 is looking at $192 a week, or roughly $833 a month. These are gross-income numbers. If you tithe on net instead, expect the figure to run 15-25% lower depending on your tax bracket and deductions.
None of this accounts for your specific pay schedule, filing status, or whether you are salaried, hourly, or self-employed. Rather than doing this math by hand every pay period, use the Tithe Calculator on the homepage. Enter your income and pay frequency, and it gives you the exact number, weekly, biweekly, monthly, or annually.
For a biweekly paycheck, the math shifts slightly because you are working with 26 pay periods a year instead of 12 months. On a $60,000 salary, a biweekly check is roughly $2,308, and 10% of that is about $231 per paycheck. On $100,000, a biweekly tithe lands around $385. If your income varies month to month, a commission job, tips, or seasonal freelance work, calculate the tithe on each check or each deposit rather than trying to estimate an annual average up front. It is easier to stay consistent that way, and it keeps the tithe tied to what you actually earned that period.
This deserves more than a paragraph, which is why it has its own page, but the short version matters here too.
Gross income is everything you earned before taxes and deductions. Net income is what actually lands in your bank account. The Bible’s firstfruits language (Exodus 23:19, Proverbs 3:9) points toward giving from the top, before anything else is subtracted, which is the argument for gross. Tithing on net is not condemned anywhere in Scripture, and plenty of faithful Christians do it, especially when they are just starting the practice.
If you want the full reasoning on both sides, along with dollar examples showing exactly how much the choice affects your annual giving, read Should I Tithe on Gross or Net Income?. And once you have decided, How to Calculate Your Tithe walks through the step-by-step process for irregular pay, self-employment income, and bonuses.
This is the question underneath the question for a lot of people. They are not asking “what percent is tithe” out of curiosity. They are asking because 10% feels impossible against their current budget, and they want to know if there is grace for less.
There is grace, and there is also a real answer worth being honest about.
The tithe was never meant to be a number you hit only once you have margin. It was meant to be the first commitment, made in faith, before you know how the rest of the month works out. That is uncomfortable to hear when money is tight. It is also the actual pattern in Malachi 3:10: bring it first, then watch what happens.
If 10% genuinely is not possible right now, because of debt, a job loss, or a season where the math does not work, start with what you can give and hold it as a direction, not a finish line. A family giving 3% faithfully and growing toward 10% over two years is living out the tithe more than a family that decided 10% was too hard and gave up on giving altogether.
If debt specifically is what makes 10% feel out of reach, that question gets a full treatment in Should You Tithe While in Debt?. Short version: yes, keep tithing, but the article walks through how to think about it without ignoring your obligations to creditors.
The tithe is the floor, not the ceiling. Scripture distinguishes between the tithe, which was structured and expected, and offerings, which were voluntary and additional.
Israel’s calendar included freewill offerings on top of the tithe (Deuteronomy 16:10), and the New Testament pattern of generosity, the widow’s two coins (Luke 21:1-4), the Macedonian churches giving beyond their ability (2 Corinthians 8:1-5), points past 10% as a ceiling. Ten percent is where obedience starts. Where it ends is between you and God, and for a lot of generous people, it does not end at 10%.
Practically, this is where a church budget line gets split. The tithe usually goes to your local church, the body that feeds you spiritually week to week. Offerings can go anywhere: a missionary you support, a benevolence fund, a family in your church going through a hard season, a ministry outside your denomination entirely. Keeping that distinction in mind, tithe to the local church, offerings wherever conviction leads, tends to simplify the question of how much and where.
Here is an uncomfortable number. Research on American church giving has put the average at roughly 2 to 3 percent of income for decades, not 10. That gap between the biblical standard and the practiced average is wide, and it has stayed wide for decades regardless of how many sermons get preached on Malachi 3.
Knowing that gap exists does not change what the tithe is. It just means that giving a full 10% puts you in a smaller group than you might expect, and that starting the practice at all is already a meaningful step past where most people land.
How much tithe should Catholics give? The Catholic Church does not enforce a strict 10% requirement the way some Protestant traditions teach it, but tithing as a spiritual discipline is encouraged, and many Catholic parishes and dioceses still teach the biblical tenth as the guiding standard alongside broader stewardship of time and talent.
How much should Christians tithe compared to other faiths? The 10% figure is specific to the biblical tradition, rooted in Abraham, the Law, and Malachi. Whatever other traditions teach about giving, the Christian tithe traces back to those same texts and lands on the same number every time.
Is tithe based on income before or after retirement contributions? Retirement contributions come out of gross pay, so if you tithe on gross, you tithe before that deduction too. It is still money you earned, even if you never touch it directly.
You do not need to keep doing this math in your head every payday. Use the Tithe Calculator to enter your income, gross or net, and your pay frequency, and get your exact tithe amount in seconds.
If you are still working out the basics, start with What Is a Tithe? for the foundational case, then move to How to Calculate Your Tithe once you know your number and want to build the habit.