In palette-based coding, a video coder may form a so-called “palette” as a table of colors representing the video data of a given block. The video coder may code index values for one or more pixels values of a current block of video data, where the index values indicate entries in the palette that represent the pixel values of the current block. According to the techniques, a video coder determines one or more palette entries in a predictive palette that are copied to the current palette, and a number of new palette entries not in the predictive palette that are included in the current palette. The video coder calculates a size of the current palette equal to the sum of the number of the copied palette entries and the number of the new palette entries, and generates the current palette including the copied palette entries and the new palette entries.