How Much Does a 1 Million Dollar Annuity Pay?

A $1 million immediate annuity paid about $6,790 a month for life to a 65-year-old man and roughly $6,490 to a woman the same age, based on the best available quotes on the AnnuaLife immediate annuity rates board, last updated July 29, 2026. That is $81,480 and $77,880 a year. Every protection option you add lowers it.

Think of an annuity quote the way you would read an itemized bill. There is a base price, and then there is everything you added: the survivor coverage, the refund feature, the guaranteed period, the increasing payment. None of those are free, and none of them show up as a separate charge. They show up as a smaller number at the bottom of the page.

That is the honest way to read every figure below. The headline payout is the plain, unadorned version of the contract. It is the biggest check anyone will quote you and it comes with the fewest promises attached. Each protection you want gets paid for out of that same check.

At a million dollars, the decisions are also different in kind, not just in size. Concentration with a single insurer starts to matter. Taxes get large enough to shape the plan. And the odds that you genuinely need a million dollars of your money converted into income are low, which is the part of this page most worth reading twice.

How much does a $1 million annuity pay per month?

Between roughly $6,140 and $8,820 a month, depending on age and gender, based on the best available life-only quotes across surveyed carriers on the AnnuaLife immediate annuity rates board, last updated July 29, 2026. That board publishes monthly income per $100,000 of premium, and the figures below are those amounts multiplied by ten. The board also notes that its published figures illustrate premiums from $10,000 to $1,000,000, and that above that an advisor runs a real illustration, so a million dollars sits right at the top of the published range.

Source: AnnuaLife immediate annuity rates board, last updated July 29, 2026, best available monthly payment across surveyed carriers per $100,000 of premium, single life with no refund, scaled to $1,000,000. Dated illustration figures, not quotes. Payments are backed by the issuing insurer’s claims-paying ability. Annuities are not FDIC insured. Live figures sit on the immediate annuity rates page.

What does the check look like by start age?

Older start ages buy larger payments, and at a million dollars the gaps are large enough to be worth real deliberation. Moving from 65 to 70 added about $750 a month for a man on the July 29, 2026 board. Moving from 65 to 75 added about $2,030.

That last figure is the one that gets skipped. Waiting five years to collect $9,000 more per year means giving up $407,400 of payments first. On simple cash arithmetic, the catch-up runs well past any reasonable life expectancy. Deferral at this size is a legitimate strategy when you do not need the income yet and the money is doing productive work elsewhere. It is not a way to get more total dollars out of the same premium.

The practical alternative most large buyers should ask about is laddering: buying income in tranches across several years rather than committing the whole premium to one day’s payout factors. It spreads your exposure to interest rates and lets you keep more money reachable for longer. Our guides to $200,000 and $500,000 show what each tranche buys.

What does each payout option cost, itemized?

Here is the bill, line by line, for a 65-year-old man putting $1,000,000 into an immediate annuity on the July 29, 2026 board. The base is the life-only payout, and each option below it is what that same premium produced with the feature attached.

Source: AnnuaLife immediate annuity rates board, last updated July 29, 2026, per $100,000 scaled to $1,000,000. Joint-life and increasing-payment figures are not published on that board; the AnnuaLife income rates board, September 2026, states only that every figure it publishes is single life and that joint-life income is lower on nearly every product. Those two lines require a live quote.

What would an inflation-adjusted $1 million annuity pay?

Less at the start, more later, and the size of that trade only comes from a real quote. Most immediate annuity payments are level for life, so a $6,790 check in 2026 buys steadily less as the years pass. Carriers offer increasing-payment or cost-of-living options that answer that, and they pay for them the only way they can: by starting your income meaningfully below the level-payment figure.

Two things are worth holding in your head before you shop for that feature. First, it takes years for the rising check to catch the level one, and more years still to recover the payments you gave up in the meantime, so the option rewards long lives specifically. Second, some of your retirement income already adjusts. Social Security received a 2.8 percent cost-of-living adjustment for 2026, according to the SSA announcement of October 2025, and that adjustment applies for as long as the benefit is paid.

• Ask the carrier for both quotes side by side, level and increasing, with the crossover year calculated in writing. Do not accept a percentage description of the reduction without dollar figures.
• Ask what the increase is tied to. A fixed annual increase and an index-linked increase behave very differently over 25 years.
• Consider the cheaper structural answer: annuitize less, and keep the remainder invested for growth so the portfolio does the inflation work instead of the contract. Our guide to annuity inflation risk covers the trade-offs.

Should a million dollars go to one carrier?

That is a genuine question at this size, and the answer for most buyers is no. Every payment on an annuity depends on the claims-paying ability of the insurance company that issued it. Annuities are not FDIC insured, and there is no bank or government guarantee standing behind the contract. A million dollars concentrated in one company is a different risk posture than $100,000, even if the company is excellent.

• Check the financial strength ratings before you compare payouts. An AM Best rating is a starting point, not the whole picture, and it belongs on the same sheet as the monthly figure.
• Ask whether splitting the premium changes the payout. Some carriers use banded payout factors, so two smaller contracts may quote differently than one large one. Get it in writing.
• Ask about premium limits and issue ages. Large single premiums can require home-office approval, which is normal but affects timing.
• Ladder the start dates as well as the carriers. Buying across two or three years spreads your exposure to whatever interest rates are doing on any single day.
• Keep a genuine liquid reserve outside every contract. Money in an immediate annuity is not available at any price, and that is the point of the product.

What if you defer with an income rider instead?

You trade a smaller starting check for keeping an account you can still see and access. The AnnuaLife income rates board, September 2026, publishes dated illustration figures for fixed index annuities with lifetime income riders, quoted as annual income per $100,000, single life, on a purchase at 60 with income starting at 65.

Scaled to $1,000,000, that published range runs from roughly $70,500 to $123,800 a year at 65. Before reading the top of that range as an offer, understand what produces it. The income is calculated from a benefit base, which is an accounting value used to size the check and not a balance you can withdraw or leave to heirs. Rider fees on that board run from zero to about 1.25 percent annually and are charged against the contract every year, whether or not the index credits anything. And the contract carries a surrender period during which access above the free-withdrawal amount triggers a charge. Read income annuities for how those pieces interact.

What does a million-dollar annuity cost you in flexibility and taxes?

More than most buyers expect on both counts, and the tax side scales in a way the payout does not. An immediate annuity is irrevocable. Once the contract is issued you give up access to the premium, and the income stream is what you get back. At $1 million, that means a very large share of a household’s assets can become permanently untouchable in a single afternoon.

On taxes, the source of the premium decides almost everything. If the money is qualified, from an IRA or a 401(k) rollover, the payments are generally taxable as ordinary income in the year they are received, and $81,480 of new ordinary income is enough to change a household’s bracket and how much of a Social Security benefit is taxable. If the premium is after-tax money, an exclusion ratio applies and only the earnings portion of each payment is taxable until the premium is recovered, after which the full payment generally becomes taxable.

There is one more wrinkle at this size. If the premium comes from an IRA, required minimum distributions are part of the picture, and annuitized IRA money interacts with those rules in ways that are contract-specific. Our RMD calculator guide explains how the required amount is computed, and how annuities are taxed covers the rest. All of this is general education rather than tax advice, and a million-dollar decision deserves a tax professional’s review before anything moves.

Moving forward

Read the quote like the itemized bill it is. There is a base number, and there is everything you chose to add, and the bottom line is the sum of those decisions. At a million dollars the base number is large enough to be genuinely tempting and the additions are expensive enough to be worth arguing about.

Start with an estimate. The annuity payout calculator takes your premium, your start age, and your gender and returns an illustrative single-life monthly figure in seconds. Then take it to a Certified Annuity Advisor who can quote the joint-life and increasing-payment versions the boards do not publish, compare carriers across the spread you saw above, and tell you plainly how much of the million should stay exactly where it is.

Frequently asked questions