Pennies to Dollars Converter

100. A penny is defined as exactly 1 cent ($0.01), and a dollar is 100 cents, so 100 pennies equal $1.00. The same dollar can be made of 20 nickels, 10 dimes, 4 quarters, 2 half-dollars, or 1 dollar coin. The calculator shows the equivalent counts for every supported denomination side by side.

Circulating coins are the penny (1 cent), nickel (5c), dime (10c), quarter (25c), half-dollar (50c), and dollar coin ($1). Dollar coins include the Susan B. Anthony (1979 to 1981 and 1999), the Sacagawea (since 2000), and the Presidential series; the larger Eisenhower dollar was minted 1971 to 1978. Circulating paper currency comes in $1, $2, $5, $10, $20, $50, and $100. The $500, $1,000, $5,000, and $10,000 notes were last printed in 1945 and officially retired from circulation in 1969.

The US Mint reports that producing one penny costs about 3 cents in metal (zinc with a copper plating) plus labor and distribution, so each penny loses roughly 2 cents at issue. Congress has debated retiring the cent multiple times (the Currency Optimization, Innovation, and National Savings Act and similar bills), but lawmakers have kept the penny in production because cash transactions would then have to round to the nearest 5 cents, which lobbying groups like Americans for Common Cents argue would disadvantage low-income shoppers and small cash businesses. The nickel also costs more to mint than its face value, but the political case for keeping the penny has stalled action so far.

Yes. The Royal Canadian Mint stopped distributing the one-cent coin on 4 February 2013. Electronic payments (cards, mobile, cheques) still settle to the exact cent, but cash transactions are rounded to the nearest 5 cents: amounts ending in 1, 2, 6, or 7 cents round down, and amounts ending in 3, 4, 8, or 9 cents round up. The Bank of Canada estimated savings of about 11 million CAD per year, and businesses retained pennies as legal tender even though they are no longer minted. New Zealand (1989), Australia (1992), and the Netherlands (effective 2004) made similar changes earlier.

Greedy means take as many of the biggest denomination as fit, then move down. For $1.87 that is 1 dollar (leaves 87c), 1 half-dollar (leaves 37c), 1 quarter (leaves 12c), 1 dime (leaves 2c), 0 nickels, 2 pennies. Total: 6 pieces. For the US coin set (1c, 5c, 10c, 25c, 50c, $1) greedy always produces the fewest pieces because the system is canonical. That is not true of every coin system: in a hypothetical 1, 7, 10-cent system, greedy gives 14 cents as 10 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 (5 coins), but 7 + 7 is only 2 coins. The US set was designed to avoid that pitfall.