How to Calculate Percentage Change in Google Sheets (Increase & Decrease)

Whether you are tracking monthly business revenue, monitoring website traffic, or analyzing inventory costs, mastering the percentage change formula in Google Sheets is essential for accurate performance tracking.

In this guide, you will learn how to apply the percent change formula in Google Sheets, handle both growth and drops, automate calculations across entire columns with ARRAYFORMULA, and protect your reports from common calculation errors.

1. The Basic Percentage Increase Formula

To calculate the rate of change between two periods, the fundamental mathematical formula is:

Step-by-Step Spreadsheet Example (Growth):

Suppose you recorded $5,000 in revenue last month (Cell A2) and $6,500 this month (Cell B2).

1. Click on cell C2 where you want the percentage change to display.
2. Enter the following formula:

=(B2 - A2) / A2

3. Press Enter. Google Sheets will display 0.30.
4. With cell C2 selected, click the % (Format as percent) icon on the top toolbar (or press Ctrl + Shift + 5 on Windows / Cmd + Shift + 5 on Mac). If you want to streamline your everyday sheet operations, check out our guide on 50 essential Google Sheets keyboard shortcuts.
5. Your cell will now cleanly display 30.00%.

2. Calculating Percentage Decrease or Negative Change

What happens when performance drops? The advantage of this percentage change formula in Google Sheets is that it handles decreases automatically without requiring a different formula.

Suppose your site traffic was 10,000 visits last week (Cell A3), but declined to 7,500 visits this week (Cell B3):

=(B3 - A3) / A3

Result: (7500 - 10000) / 10000 = -0.25. Once formatted as a percentage, it displays as -25.00%.

3. Automate Entire Columns with ARRAYFORMULA

If you are managing dynamic dashboards, tracking inventory counts, or importing automated submissions (such as inquiries collected via our guide on connecting HTML forms to Google Sheets), manually dragging formulas down rows creates clutter.

Enter this single ARRAYFORMULA into cell C2 to calculate percentage changes down the entire column automatically:

=ARRAYFORMULA(IF(ISBLANK(A2:A), "", (B2:B - A2:A) / A2:A))

The IF(ISBLANK(...)) check ensures that empty rows at the bottom of your sheet remain blank instead of displaying calculation errors.

Note: If you are pulling baseline numbers from an external workbook and encounter sync delays, see our troubleshooting guide on how to fix IMPORTRANGE loading errors in Google Sheets.

4. Quick Percentage Formula Reference Table

Use this reference table to quickly copy standard percentage operations into your spreadsheet:

Key Rules for Accurate Percentage Reporting

• Order of Operations: Always wrap (B2 - A2) in parentheses. Without parentheses, Google Sheets will divide A2 / A2 first due to standard arithmetic precedence.
• Handle Zero Baselines with IFERROR: If your initial period has a value of 0, standard division triggers a #DIV/0! error. Wrapping your formula as =IFERROR((B2-A2)/A2, 0) prevents broken sheets.
• Integrate with Lookups: When calculating variances across multi-tab financial models, pair this formula with our guide on XLOOKUP vs. VLOOKUP in Google Sheets to look up baseline data dynamically.