This free online exponent calculator raises any base number to any power, including negative and fractional exponents. Enter a base and an exponent to instantly compute base to the power of exponent using JavaScript's built-in power function.
How to Use the Exponent Calculator
Enter the "Base" number.
Enter the "Exponent" (power) to raise it to.
Click "Calculate" to see base raised to the exponent and its computed value.
What Different Exponents Mean
A positive whole-number exponent is repeated multiplication: 2 to the power 5 means 2 × 2 × 2 × 2 × 2 = 32. Other kinds of exponent extend that idea in a consistent way:
Exponent
Meaning
Example
Zero
Any non-zero base to the power 0 is 1
7 to the power 0 = 1
Negative
One divided by the positive power
2 to the power −3 = 1 ÷ 8 = 0.125
0.5
Square root
144 to the power 0.5 = 12
Other fraction m/n
n-th root, raised to the power m
16 to the power 0.75 = 8
Whole number, negative base
Odd powers stay negative, even powers turn positive
−2 to the power 3 = −8; −2 to the power 4 = 16
Practical Example: Compound Growth
Exponents are the engine of compound interest. If an investment grows by 7% a year, each year multiplies it by 1.07. Over 10 years the growth factor is 1.07 to the power 10. Enter base 1.07 and exponent 10 and the calculator shows 1.9671513573, so ₹1,00,000 would grow to about ₹1,96,715 with annual compounding. The same idea works in reverse: a 6% yearly rise in prices for 5 years is 1.06 to the power 5, roughly 1.338, meaning something costing ₹1,000 today would cost about ₹1,338.
How Results Are Displayed, and Their Limits
The result is rounded to 10 decimal places. A consequence is that very small results, below about 0.00000000005, are shown as 0. For example, 2 to the power −40 is about 9.09 × 10⁻¹³ but displays as 0.
Very large results switch to scientific notation. 2 to the power 100 appears as 1.2676506002282294e+30, which means 1.2677 × 10³⁰. Beyond roughly 1.8 × 10³⁰⁸ the browser can no longer represent the number and the result shows Infinity.
Whole numbers above about 9 quadrillion (2 to the power 53) lose exactness in the last digits. 2 to the power 64 is exactly 18,446,744,073,709,551,616, but the calculator shows 18446744073709552000.
A fraction like 1/3 cannot be typed exactly, so 27 to the power 0.3333 gives a value close to, but not exactly, 3. Use more decimal places in the exponent for a closer answer.
Frequently Asked Questions
It uses JavaScript's Math.pow(base, exponent) function, then rounds the result to 10 decimal places to remove tiny floating-point rounding errors before displaying it.
Yes. A negative exponent gives the reciprocal, for example 2 to the power of -2 = 0.25, and a fractional exponent works like a root, for example 9 to the power of 0.5 = 3.
Extremely large results are shown as "Infinity" or "-Infinity". Combinations that have no real answer, such as a negative base raised to a fractional exponent, show "Result is not a real number" instead of a value.
A decimal exponent such as 0.3333 is not exactly 1/3, and for a negative base most non-integer powers have no real value, so the calculator reports that the result is not a real number. To find an odd root of a negative number, take the root of the positive number and put the minus sign back: 8 to the power 1/3 is 2, so the cube root of −8 is −2.
It returns 1, following the convention used by JavaScript and most programming languages. In some areas of mathematics 0 to the power 0 is left undefined, so check which convention your textbook or exam follows.