USDA Raised SNAP’s Maximum Benefit for a Family of Four to $1,023 a Month on Oct. 1, While Hawaii Households Will Get Less

For a family of four on food assistance, the grocery budget reset on Oct. 1. That is the day each year when the federal government applies its annual cost-of-living adjustment to Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, and for most of the country, the ceiling went up.

Under the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s fiscal year 2027 cost-of-living memo, the maximum monthly SNAP benefit for a four-person household in the 48 contiguous states and Washington, D.C., is now $1,023. The same memo says the maximum for a family of four in Hawaii will decrease, to $1,655.

The new SNAP maximums by household size

The memo, dated Aug. 21 and signed on behalf of Ronald Ward, acting associate administrator for SNAP, sets the figures that apply from Oct. 1, 2026, through Sept. 30, 2027. In the 48 states and D.C., the maximum monthly allotments are:

One person, $306. Two people, $562. Three people, $808. Four people, $1,023. Five people, $1,217. Six people, $1,463. Seven people, $1,616. Eight people, $1,841. Each additional person adds $225.

The Deseret News reported that the four-person maximum rose $29 a month and the one-person maximum rose $8, which puts last year’s levels at $994 and $298. The minimum benefit for one- and two-person households went up $1, to $25.

These are maximums. The amount a household actually receives depends on its income and deductions.

The memo also spells out how larger households are handled. Each person beyond eight adds 22% of the four-person maximum, and the total for those extra members is capped at 200% of the four-person figure. In the 48 states, that cap is reached at 18 people, where the maximum is $3,887 a month.

Hawaii goes the other way

Hawaii, Alaska, Guam and the U.S. Virgin Islands have their own, higher benefit tables. In Hawaii, the new four-person maximum is $1,655, and the memo states plainly that it “will decrease” to that figure. The USDA document does not explain the drop, and the Deseret News report says only that Hawaii benefits are falling slightly.

Hawaii’s other new limits include a one-person maximum of $496, a minimum benefit of $40, a standard deduction of $306 for households of one to four, and an excess shelter cap of $1,036.

Alaska, by contrast, runs three separate tables depending on how remote an area is. A four-person household’s maximum is $1,306 in urban Alaska, $1,666 in Rural 1 areas and $2,027 in Rural 2 areas. Guam’s four-person maximum is $1,507, and the U.S. Virgin Islands’ is $1,315.

Income limits and deductions that changed on Oct. 1

The cost-of-living memo also resets who qualifies. In the 48 states and D.C., a family of four can have gross monthly income of up to $3,575, or 130% of the poverty level, and net income of up to $2,750. Households with an elderly or disabled member who buy and prepare food separately can qualify with gross income up to $4,538.

The standard deduction is $217 for households of one to three people, $229 for four, $268 for five and $308 for six or more. The cap on the excess shelter deduction, which helps families with high rent and utility costs, is $769. The maximum homeless shelter deduction is $205.66.

Asset limits stand at $4,750 for households with a member who is 60 or older or disabled, and $3,000 for all others.

The bigger changes arriving alongside the raise

The inflation adjustment is separate from the larger overhaul of SNAP in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the budget law Congress passed in July 2025. Several of its provisions also took effect Oct. 1, according to the Deseret News. Work requirements now reach able-bodied adults without dependents up to age 64, up from 54, and having a youngest dependent aged 14 or older no longer exempts an adult from the time-limited work rule on its own, though other exemptions, such as for disability, still apply.

The same report, citing ABC News, said roughly 5 million Americans, including 1 million children, stopped receiving SNAP over the past year, out of about 37 million people enrolled.

States are also picking up more of the program’s cost. A USDA proposed rule published in the Federal Register on June 24 would cut the federal share of state SNAP administrative costs from 50% to 25% beginning in fiscal year 2027, carrying out Section 10106 of the law.

The Food Research & Action Center, an anti-hunger group, estimates the administrative shift moves about $17 billion to states over five years, ranging from about $3 million for Wyoming to $168 million for New York. FRAC’s state-by-state table puts Hawaii’s added administrative cost at $14.8 million, with a projected benefit cost share of more than $103 million once error-rate penalties begin in October 2027.

That second piece is the larger one. Starting Oct. 1, 2027, states with a payment error rate of 6% or higher must pay up to 15% of the SNAP benefits issued in their state, the Deseret News reported, citing a Center on Budget and Policy Priorities projection that nearly half of states could each owe at least $100 million if error rates do not fall.

For families, the practical point is that the higher allotments apply to benefits for months starting Oct. 1, while the new work rules depend on each person’s age, household and exemptions. Congress also faces a Dec. 11 government funding deadline, and The Tonic Edit has laid out what that deadline could mean for SNAP.

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This article was produced with AI assistance and edited for accuracy against the sources linked above.

Image: Tessa Bury – CC BY 4.0/Wikimedia Commons