A tithe simply means a tenth. Pop in your income and I'll work out your tithe — and you can adjust the percentage if you also give offerings on top. Quick, private, and nothing is saved.
“Each man should give what he has decided in his heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.”2 Corinthians 9:7 (WEB)
This is just the arithmetic — the heart of it is between you and the Lord. Whether you tithe on gross or net income, and how you handle offerings beyond the tithe, is something to pray over and decide with peace.
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The word tithe simply means "a tenth." Throughout Scripture, God's people brought a tenth of what they had back to Him as an act of worship and trust. It's a beautiful, ancient rhythm: we acknowledge that everything we have came from His hand in the first place, and we give a portion back with open, grateful hearts. This little calculator can help you work out what a tenth of your income looks like, but I want to be clear from the start that the number is the easy part. The heart behind it is what God truly cares about.
Tithing isn't a transaction where we pay God for blessings. It's a posture. When I set aside a tithe, I'm reminding myself that He is my provider, not my paycheck, and that loosening my grip on money is one of the most freeing things I can do.
If there's one passage I'd want you to carry with you, it's this: in 2 Corinthians 9:7, Paul writes that each one should give as he has purposed in his heart, not grudgingly or of necessity, for God loves a cheerful giver. Read that last part again. God loves a cheerful giver. He isn't standing over us with a ledger, demanding His cut. He delights in the joy we find when we give freely.
And in Malachi 3:10, the Lord makes a tender invitation to bring the whole tithe into the storehouse and to prove Him, to see whether He won't pour out a blessing. I don't read that as a vending-machine promise. I read it as God saying, "Trust Me with this, and watch how faithful I am." Giving has always been more about what it does in us than what it gets for us.
One of the most common questions I hear is whether we should tithe on our gross income (before taxes) or our net income (what actually lands in our account). And here's my honest answer: the Bible doesn't hand us a rule on this, so it's a matter of personal conviction between you and the Lord.
Don't let anyone bind your conscience here, and please don't let guilt drive the decision. Pray about it, decide in your own heart, and give cheerfully either way. God sees the willingness far more than the percentage point.
It helps to know the difference between a tithe and an offering. A tithe is that baseline tenth, the regular, intentional giving we return to God through our local church. An offering is anything we give above and beyond that, often in response to a specific need or a nudge from the Holy Spirit. Both are beautiful. Neither earns us more of God's love, because His love for us was never for sale.
What I never want tithing to become is a box we check out of fear or obligation. We are not under law but under grace. We give because we've already been given everything in Christ, not so that He'll finally accept us. When giving flows out of gratitude instead of pressure, it turns into genuine worship, and worship is the whole point.
To calculate a tithe, you take ten percent of your income, which simply means multiplying your income by 0.10. So if you earn $3,000 in a month, a tithe would be $300. The calculator on this page does the math for you, including any extra offering you'd like to add on top. But please remember, this is a starting point and a help, not a hard rule that condemns you. If giving a full tithe isn't possible in your current season, give what you can with a glad heart and trust God with the rest. He honors the widow's two mites just as surely as the largest gift.
Wherever you land, let your giving be free, joyful, and rooted in love rather than fear. If you'd like to know more about the faith that shapes how I see all of this, I'd love to share it with you on my faith page. May you discover, like I have, that it really is more blessed to give than to receive.
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