Plan your NFL team's salary cap with this Salary Cap Calculator. Enter your total cap limit, dead cap, and up to five player contract values to see your remaining cap space, cap used, and a visual breakdown of how your roster spending stacks up against the league cap.
Remaining Cap Space
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Total Cap Used
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Cap Used (%)
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Dead Cap (% of Total)
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Top 5 Players Combined
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The NFL salary cap is a hard limit on the total amount each team can spend on player contracts in a given league year. It's set annually by the NFL and NFLPA based on a percentage of projected league revenues (known as 'All Revenue'). Every team must comply with the cap ceiling; teams that exceed it face fines and potential forfeiture of draft picks.
Each team's total cap charges — including base salaries, signing bonus proration, incentives, and restructured deals — must fall at or below the cap number. Teams must also maintain a 53-man active roster. A common metric is the 'Top-51' rule during the offseason, which counts only the 51 highest cap hits when the roster is below 53 players.
Dead cap refers to the remaining prorated signing bonus money that still counts against a team's cap after a player has been cut or traded. When a team releases a player early, any unearned bonus money accelerates onto the cap in the year of release (or split across future years for a post-June 1 designation).
The 2026 NFL salary cap is projected to be approximately $279 million per team, though the official number is finalized during the offseason based on league revenue reporting. Caps have grown significantly year over year — from $182.5M in 2020 to $255.4M in 2024.
A player's cap hit is the total amount their contract charges against the team's salary cap in a specific season. It includes their base salary plus any prorated portion of signing bonuses, roster bonuses, and other guaranteed money spread across the contract years.
During the offseason (before a team has a full 53-man roster), the NFL counts only the 51 largest cap numbers on a roster toward the cap. This gives teams slightly more flexibility when signing free agents and managing offseason roster construction. Once the regular season begins, all 53 players count.
No — the NFL operates a hard salary cap, meaning teams cannot exceed the limit at any point during the league year. Unlike the NBA's soft cap, there are no luxury tax provisions. Teams that violate cap rules face significant penalties including fines, loss of draft picks, and voiding of contracts.
Teams can create cap space by releasing players (converting a cap hit to dead cap), restructuring contracts by converting salary into signing bonus (pushing cap charges to future years), or trading high-cap players to other teams. Restructuring is common but carries future cap risk as proration accumulates.