Roth IRA Statistics (2026)

The Roth IRA, created in 1997, is now a mainstream retirement account: about 37.5 million US households, or 27.8%, owned one in mid-2025, second only to the traditional IRA's 43.9 million households. Together all IRA types held $19.2 trillion at year-end 2025.

Yet Roth balances are small relative to traditional accounts. The average Roth IRA held about $57,450 in IRS tax-year-2023 data, roughly a quarter of the average traditional IRA, a gap that says more about account age and funding than about how popular Roth has become.

IRAs are the largest single slice of US retirement savings. At year-end 2025 they held $19.2 trillion, about 39% of the $49.1 trillion total retirement market, up from roughly 24% two decades ago (see the table below).

The ICI does not publish a clean Roth-versus-traditional dollar split, but Roth is clearly the minority by assets. Traditional accounts have absorbed decades of large 401(k) rollovers, while Roth accounts are younger and funded mostly by capped annual contributions.

As of mid-2025, 59.6 million households (44.2%) owned some IRA. Traditional IRAs led at 43.9 million households (32.6%), Roth IRAs followed at 37.5 million (27.8%), and employer-sponsored SEP or SIMPLE IRAs trailed near 4% (see the chart and table below).

Households can own more than one type, which is why the components sum past the 44.2% who own any IRA. The figures come from the ICI's IRA Owners Survey, fielded in May and June 2025 (ICI).

Traditional and Roth IRAs are close in household ownership but far apart in size. IRS tax-year-2023 data counts roughly 53.7 million traditional accounts against about 29.3 million Roth accounts, and average balances of $225,413 versus $57,450 (see the table below).

The structural differences drive the gap: traditional IRAs take pre-tax money and required minimum distributions from age 73, while Roth IRAs take after-tax money, grow tax-free, and have no RMDs for the original owner. That makes Roth the natural home for younger, longer-horizon savers.

Roth balances climb steadily with age, from about $7,242 for savers under 25 to $72,027 at ages 60-64 and $134,039 for those 70 and older (see the chart and table below). The under-40 crowd holds relatively modest sums simply because they have had fewer years to contribute and compound.

Notably, Roth balances trail traditional balances at almost every age, and the gap widens later in life: at 60-64 the average traditional IRA ($289,052) is roughly four times the average Roth ($72,027), reflecting decades of rollovers flowing into traditional accounts.

The balance gap is not a sign that Roth is failing. It reflects two things: Roth accounts are younger on average, and they cannot receive the large pre-tax rollovers that inflate traditional IRAs. In 2023 alone about $682 billion rolled from employer plans into traditional IRAs, versus only ~$24 billion of inflows to Roth.

Because rollovers ran roughly 7.7 times larger than fresh contributions, the traditional IRA is essentially a landing pad for old 401(k)s, while the Roth is built dollar-by-dollar from capped annual contributions. Over time, as younger Roth savers age, the average Roth balance should keep rising.

Among newer savers, Roth is dominant. In Fidelity's Q4 2025 analysis, Gen Z directed 95% of IRA contributions to Roth accounts, with Millennials at 75% and Gen X at 66% (see the chart below). Younger workers gravitate to Roth because paying tax now, while in a lower bracket, can beat paying it in retirement.

That tilt is why the account count and asset totals understate Roth's momentum. The people opening and funding Roth IRAs today skew young, so the account is capturing a large and growing share of first-time retirement savers even as its average balance stays modest.

Contribution activity is broad but shallow relative to the contribution cap. Across all US households, 17% contributed to a traditional or Roth IRA in tax year 2024, rising to 38% among households that already owned an IRA (ICI).

On the Roth side specifically, about 10 million taxpayers made Roth contributions in 2022, at an average of roughly $3,482, well under that year's $6,000 limit. Most savers contribute less than the maximum, which is another reason Roth balances build slowly.

The IRA system is dominated by rollovers, not new savings. In 2023, 5.86 million taxpayers rolled about $682 billion out of employer plans, at an average of roughly $116,500 each, against just $89 billion of new contributions across all IRA types (see the table below).

Roth saw a fraction of that flow, about $24 billion of rollover and conversion inflows, because most rollovers come from pre-tax 401(k)s that land in traditional IRAs. IRS data does not cleanly isolate Roth conversions, so the $24 billion is best read as total Roth inflows from rollovers and conversions combined.

For 2026 the IRA contribution limit rose to $7,500, or $8,600 for savers 50 and older, after the SECURE 2.0 Act indexed the catch-up amount to $1,100 (see the table below). The same limit is shared across all of a person's traditional and Roth IRAs combined.

Roth eligibility phases out by income: contributions shrink between $153,000 and $168,000 of MAGI for singles and between $242,000 and $252,000 for married couples filing jointly (IRS). Higher earners often use a backdoor Roth conversion to get around these limits.

Roth is spreading fast inside employer plans, which sit alongside Roth IRAs. In Vanguard's How America Saves 2025, 86% of plans offered a Roth 401(k) option at year-end 2024, and 18% of participants used it, an all-time high (Vanguard).

Roth in-plan conversions are becoming common too: 36% of Vanguard plans offered them and 10% offered an automatic conversion feature. Growth in workplace Roth matters because those balances can later roll into Roth IRAs, feeding the account's long-run expansion.

Roth sits inside a large, rollover-fed IRA market. Fidelity's Q4 2025 analysis, covering 18.9 million IRA accounts, put the average IRA balance at $137,095, up 7% on the quarter, and reported record Q4 IRA contributions with contributors up 25% year over year.

Alternative samples run higher because they skew wealthier: Empower's dashboard data (March 2026, a self-selected sample) showed an average Roth balance of $106,073 and a median of $32,723. The IRS SOI averages are the more representative national figures.

The data tells a consistent story: Roth IRAs are widely owned, especially by younger savers, but balances build slowly because the account is funded by capped contributions rather than big rollovers. The payoff is tax-free growth and no required minimum distributions, which compound powerfully over a long horizon.

If you are early in your career and expect higher taxes later, the generational data suggests you are in good company choosing Roth. Contribute what you can toward the $7,500 limit, invest it for the long run rather than leaving it in cash, and let decades of tax-free compounding do the work. Walnut can help you organize those holdings around a clear thesis. This is general information, not investment advice.