Barbell Plate Calculator

Enter the total weight you want to lift and the weight of your bar, then tick the plate sizes you have. The calculator shows which plates go on each side and draws the loaded bar. Your plate selection is remembered on this device.

Yes. The target is the total weight lifted: the bar plus two identical sides. The calculator subtracts the bar and splits the rest evenly between the two sides.

A men's Olympic bar weighs 20 kg and a women's Olympic bar 15 kg. Training and technique bars are often 10 kg or lighter, and fixed or standard bars vary, so check yours and enter its weight.

Competition collars weigh 2.5 kg each, which matters for exact totals; add 5 kg to the bar weight if you use them. Light spring clips can usually be ignored.

The calculator never loads more than the target. If your plates can't make the exact total, it loads the closest weight below it and tells you the result isn't exact.

Robust mode first tries to build each side from sets of the same plate, so the bar is easy to load and read. Greedy mode always takes the largest plate that still fits, which usually means fewer plates.