Looking to create a WordPress custom calculator? With a simple WordPress calculator plugin, you can have a shiny calculator on your website today! Here’s how.
Approximate read time: 7 minutes
When you think about calculators, what comes to mind?
Nightmares of tax season? Flashbacks to a high school math exam? If you connect calculators with awful math-based tasks, you aren't alone.
But we've got some good news: calculators don't have to be scary.
And in this post, we'll show you why. First, we'll give you some ideas on how to use calculators. Then we'll show you how to create a WordPress custom calculator in a few easy steps.
Let's get started.
Why create a calculator in WordPress?
Let’s imagine you run a real estate business. A website calculator is one of the most helpful things you can offer customers.
You can give them a way to calculate their monthly payment and interest rate, how much they need to save, or if they’re ready to buy a house. A way to figure out these amounts with a web calculator for your customers is a great way to bring organic traffic to your website.
And this is true for almost all industries!
Here are just a few more examples of how you can use a calculator:
- Physical trainers offering weight-loss or BMI calculators
- Real estate agents helping people with a mortgage calculator
- Businesses using PayPal order forms
A calculator is suitable for your website because it’s excellent for website visitors. Helping them means helping yourself. And a custom calculator is a great way to do that.
Plus, you can collect users’ email addresses for email marketing and lead generation. All you need to do is require an email to get the results of your calculator for lead generation, and you are set!
So, why wouldn't you use a calculator on your WordPress site? Which begs an even bigger question: What is the best way to add a calculator to my website?
We recommend a forms plugin!
So, let’s show you how to make a calculator in WordPress with a plugin.
Read More: 6 Ways to Use Calculators on WordPress Sites
How to create a custom calculator in WordPress
Looking to build something fully customized to your purpose? Here’s a step-by-step guide to using Formidable’s calculated fields.
By the way, you can use these steps with any type of calculator.
You’ll need a license key with Formidable to build your custom calculators. So head to our pricing page and grab the plugin at one of our excellent introductory rates. If unsure, you can try out Formidable using the free WordPress plugin.
Give it a test and see if you like it before upgrading.
Build your custom calculator today!
Once you’ve installed and activated the plugin, you can start following the steps.
Then follow these steps:
- Create a form and add number fields
- Create a total field
- Add extra fields (optional)
Step 1: Create a form and add number fields
The first basic step is to create a new form. To do this, go to your WordPress dashboard, and Formidable → Add New. Select Blank Form, then give it a name, and it will take you to the form builder.
Now, it’s time to add some form fields.
And it’s easy with Formidable’s simple drag-and-drop form builder. Simply choose the field you want, and drag it to the form. That’s it.
For a simple percentage calculator, you would need three fields: the number, the percentage, and the value.
Regardless of the calculator you choose, you'll want to set the number range whenever the user needs to enter a period of time (like the Loan Period for a loan payment calculator).
It’s also a good idea to fill out the Default Value, Placeholder Text, and Field Description boxes wherever necessary. This will help guide the user on how they should enter their info.
The example below added custom fields to display product options and calculate the cost.
Step 2: Create a Total field
Now that you’ve got the primary number fields to calculate what you need, it’s time to add a Total field. This is where the final calculation will appear. The calculated fields form will gather your totals.
Let's go back to the percentage calculator. In that example, the Total field would represent the value (number * percentage = value).
With this Total Number field selected, go to the Advanced tab and turn on the Calculator option. Then in the Default Value box, enter the formula for your calculation.
The formula for a simple percentage calculator would look like this:
[NUMBER FIELD #1] * [NUMBER FIELD #2]
You would just replace the field IDs in brackets with the field IDs of your form.
If you’re building a calculator for anything else, you must figure out the formulas or do some Googling. Or, if you don't have the time or energy to figure out the math equations, consider upgrading to use Formidable's pre-made templates.
Either way, don't let the math stop you from making your calculator.
Step 3: Add extra fields (optional)
Once your calculator is complete, you can add extra fields, like an Email field, to collect email addresses.
To add a new field, just look through the All Fields tab and find the one you want. Then add it to your form. It’s that easy!
You can publish the calculator as you would using one of our templates.
How to add a calculator in WordPress
Okay, so you’ve created your calculator, but how do you display it?
Simple. Go to the post or page on which you want to show the calculator and add a new WordPress block. Search for Formidable, and add the Formidable WordPress block.
Choose your calculator from the dropdown menu, and you’re finished!
Simply update your page/post, and you’re good to go.
Give your calculators superpowers with Formidable Forms
Now that you’ve learned how to make a custom calculator in WordPress, you’re just scratching the surface.
No matter what type of calculator you need, all the power to make it is now in your hands.
Need to make a price calculator? How about a loan calculator? Whether you want to create an online calculator for WordPress, Formidable is the WordPress calculator plugin that handles everything.
Here are a few examples.
Use Formidable as a cost calculator builder
Do you have an eCommerce site and want an easy way to show prices to customers?
A cost calculator builder is the only employee you need. And a good one simplifies things for you enough that you barely have to do anything.
Well, that’s exactly what you get with Formidable:
- Automatic price calculation
- WooCommerce integration
- Pre-made calculator form templates
So, whether you’re selling 100,000 products a month or 10, Formidable is here to help you.
Help people manage finances with the loan calculator plugin
Maybe you own a car dealership and want to help customers find the best financing for their future vehicles.
Formidable has a car loan calculator template ready to help you get a calculator on your WordPress website. And that saved time means you start helping customers today.
You get a new business lead with each customer that fills out your car loan calculator.
Power up people’s fitness with a fitness calculator
Body Mass Index (BMI) is a term that gets thrown more than a football on Sunday.
But that’s because people are looking to find out theirs. And what better way to attract people to your fitness website than with a BMI calculator that’s easy to use? Well, Formidable helps you do that, too.
All of your calculators. One simple WordPress plugin.
Wrapping up
As you can see, using WordPress to create a calculator from scratch can be complicated. It’s possible, but it may involve figuring out formulas and doing some math.
If you’re wondering, “How do I add a mortgage to my WordPress calculator?” Don’t worry. We’ve got you covered.
You can easily add a mortgage calculator to WordPress with Formidable.
And, Formidable doesn’t only handle calculators. Contact forms, quizzes, and anything else you can imagine are all possible with Formidable.
Now is your chance to make it happen.
So, maybe you’re wondering, “How do I create an interactive calculator for my website?” Well, we answered that question, too.
9 Best Mortgage Calculator WordPress Plugins for Real Estate
8 Best Cost Calculator Plugins for WordPress for eCommerce!
How to Generate Leads with a Calculator Lead Magnet
I definitely agree about not adding a bajillion plugins to your site. Conflicts aside, abandoned plugins and security concerns abound. Thanks for adding this to Formidable!
Formidable is our "swiss army knife" of plugins for WP. We install it on almost every site we develop. I'm not sure adding another small calc plugin is a big problem, but since we already have FF installed, it's easy enough to create things like calculators.
Thanks for the kind words! Glad you love Formidable Forms.
Do you have a solar energy calculator plugin?
Hi there, Thanks for your question. We don't currently have one, but our calculations are pretty powerful, so you could either create your own, or if you have an example to show us with the calculations involved, we could probably build a template to add to our library.
Whenever recommending Formidable Pro to other WordPress users on forums or Reddit I always say that the biggest advantage is that the team adds new functionality regularly and seems to listen to the community. And here we have additional functionality I can add. Thank you
Thanks so much for recommending Formidable Forms! We really appreciate that. We are always working on new features to add more value to our platform. We hope you love what is coming next!
My favourite calculator I created with Formidable Pro was a floor area calculator for a carpet company.
I love the computer functionality Formidable Pro.
Very useful article on how to build a calculator with wordpress. I've found the team quite responsive and helpful.
Thanks for the kind words…I’ll pass your praise on to our support team.
My company switched to Formidable Forms abot 2 years ago after being frustrated with the horrible interface of Gravity Forms. Formidable is beautiful enough that our designers love it, and feature full enough to keep our developers happy!
Thanks so much for sharing! We always love hearing about the things people love about Formidable Forms.
This is great. Thanks for the tutorial. Excited to try it out on a project!
Awesome! Calculators can add a lot of user engagement and make your site better! Best of luck on your project!
I think it could be a good idea to implement a calculator in the same page I have a real state offers, so the client could be calculate costs easily
Yep, we have many pre-built real estate and mortgage calculators as well to make your life a bit easier.
Nice!, love how versatile FF is!
I love the possibility to addvalue to my content with easy-to-use calculators! Thanks a lot!
You're welcome! Glad you are enjoying the calculator functionality built into Formidable Forms.
The sheer versatility of this plug-in continues to blow my mind. I'm amazed every time I find a new way to use it, pretty sure I'll end up using this on a new project I'm working on.
Formidable is one of the most powerful WordPress plugins, yet it is easy to use. The premium templates offer great functionality. These guys know what they are doing and they do it right. The documentation and support are superb.
Its great to see what the possibilitys are with Formidable and Im very curious about future features thats why I use an Elite subscription.
Great work guy's!
Thanks for the kind words...We have some big plans in the works. Should be a fun and exciting year.
An amazing plug-in to have. I usually install this plug into my clients website. Since most of them are not technology savvy, I believe it helps them a ton due to the lack of technology experience that they might have otherwise. Great job formidable team
Awesome! We always strive to make our customers look like rock stars for their clients. Part of this is making sure the transition when handing off a site to the client goes smoothly. Thanks for your Comment!
Hi team!
Well done on the amazing job! I love Formidable plugin so far.
Quick question: could you possibly help me create a template for the calculator I want to build?
It's a bit more complex than I can handle with the current options available. Do you mind if I run it by the team and you could point me in the right direction or help me create a bespoke template?
It's essentially an annuity type pension calculator which should be a CTA to lead into an option for my customers to make an investment or set up regular savings.
Can we make a Vaccine calculator. Its simple adding formula that add on no of days in Date of birth entered by a person. Outcome is displayed as vaccine required every age milestone...If yes plz let me know.
Hi Rajiv,
Our plugin can do limited date calculations out of the box. These typically include calculating the number of days between two dates, or calculating an age.
Our plugin can't currently add days to a date so I don't think it would be a good fit for your application. This functionality is on our feature request list, but it isn't on our current roadmap, so I don't have an estimate on when it would be available.
This blog is really helpful
Hello,
I want to create various calculators for my site, such as BMI, how much protein per day, how many calories per day, measure body fat at home, calculate calories burned RMR, etc.
My question is will I be able to do it with this plugin?
They should also be in Bulgarian, and I should point out that I have no coding skills!
Thanks in advance,
Rado
We have BMI calculators already built out and available as templates. You should be able to create calculators for these other items as well. No coding skills required.