Investment Return Calculator
Calculate your investment return, profit, and annualized growth rate.
โน๏ธAbout This Calculator
You bought $10,000 of stock and now it's worth $18,000. That's an 80% return โ great, right? Depends. If it took 3 years, your annualized return (CAGR) is 21.6%. If it took 10 years, it's 6.1%. Same profit, wildly different performance. This calculator gives you the three numbers that actually matter: total ROI (how much you made as a percentage), net profit in dollars, and CAGR (the annualized rate that lets you compare any two investments fairly). Use it for stocks, real estate, a business you sold, crypto โ anything where you put money in and got money out over time.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do you calculate ROI on an investment?
ROI = (Final Value - Initial Investment) รท Initial Investment ร 100. Put in $10,000, got back $15,000: ROI is 50%. Simple and useful, but it has a blind spot โ it doesn't care about time. A 50% return in 2 years is incredible. A 50% return in 15 years is underwhelming. That's why you need CAGR alongside ROI to get the real picture.
What is CAGR and why does it matter?
CAGR tells you the equivalent annual growth rate, as if your investment grew at a perfectly steady rate each year. Formula: (Final Value / Initial Value)^(1/Years) - 1. Why it matters: it's the only way to fairly compare investments held for different periods. Your rental property that doubled in 8 years (9% CAGR) vs. a stock that tripled in 15 years (7.6% CAGR) โ without CAGR, you might think the stock did better because it tripled.
What is a good investment return?
S&P 500 long-term average is about 10% CAGR before inflation, 7% after. That's your benchmark. Beating 10% consistently over 5+ years is genuinely impressive โ most professional fund managers can't do it. Real estate at 8-12% CAGR over a decade is strong. Below 5% CAGR after fees? You'd have done better buying a simple index fund and ignoring it.
How do I include dividends in my return calculation?
Add every dividend you received to your final value. Invested $10,000, collected $800 in dividends, position is now worth $13,000? Your real final value is $13,800, not $13,000. This matters more than people realize โ for the S&P 500, reinvested dividends account for roughly 2-3% extra return per year. Over 30 years, that difference is enormous.
How does this account for inflation?
This calculator shows nominal returns โ what your account balance actually shows. To get real (inflation-adjusted) returns, subtract the inflation rate from your CAGR. Made 9% CAGR during a period with 3% average inflation? Your real return is about 6%. That's the number that tells you how much your actual purchasing power grew, not just how big the number on the screen got.
What is the difference between ROI and IRR?
ROI: total gain as a percentage, ignores time. CAGR: annualized return for a single lump-sum investment. IRR: annualized return for investments with multiple deposits or withdrawals at different times. If you invested $10,000 once and sold later, CAGR and IRR give you the same answer. If you added $500/month over 5 years, you need IRR for an accurate number. This calculator handles the lump-sum case โ for regular contributions, use a more specialized tool.