The president's salary is $400,000 a year. See how that compares with past presidents.

Since 2001, the president of the United States has been paid $400,000 a year. Compare that to 1789, when the US elected its first president, and the presidential salary was $25,000 a year.

While that may sound like a fraction of today's paycheck, the salary's value has actually decreased by about half when adjusted for inflation.

In the 237 years since, the president has only received a handful of raises, although, of course, the office comes with plenty of other perks.

Here's how the president's annual compensation has changed since America's founding.

For the first 84 years of the United States' existence, the president earned $25,000 a year.

When Washington was elected in 1789, the task fell to Congress to decide what the presidential compensation should be.

In 2026 dollars, that $25,000 salary would be equal to approximately $949,000, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics' consumer price index.

In all, Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson, Martin Van Buren, William Henry Harrison, John Tyler, James K. Polk, Zachary Taylor, Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, Abraham Lincoln, and Andrew Johnson all made $25,000.

The first change came in 1873, when Ulysses S. Grant was the president. The annual salary was raised to $50,000.

By 1873, that $25,000 had depreciated to about $696,000 in today's money. A sizable bump to $50,000 a year made the salary worth almost $1.4 million in 2026 dollars.

Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes, James A. Garfield, Chester A. Arthur, Grover Cleveland, Benjamin Harrison, William McKinley, and Theodore Roosevelt all made $50,000.

That lasted for 36 years, until 1909, during William Howard Taft's term. It was raised to $75,000.