Calculate ROI, annualized return, total gain or loss, and visualize the growth of any investment over time.
An investment return calculator answers a question that surprisingly many investors cannot answer with precision: how well did this investment actually perform? The difference between what you put in and what you now have is visible on your account statement. What is less immediately obvious — and considerably more useful for making better future decisions — is expressing that return in a standardised format that makes meaningful comparison across different investments, timeframes, and asset classes possible.
This calculator computes four related metrics from the same set of inputs. Total ROI expresses the percentage gain or loss relative to the original investment amount — direct and useful for communicating the outcome of a completed investment in simple terms. CAGR (Compound Annual Growth Rate) normalises the return to an equivalent annual rate that accounts for the investment's duration, enabling fair comparison across investments of different lengths. Total gain or loss in dollar terms expresses the absolute outcome in a format that is directly meaningful to your financial situation regardless of percentage interpretation. The growth multiple — final value divided by amount invested — summarises the entire return in a single ratio that is immediately intuitive across any investment size.
These four metrics together provide a complete picture of any investment's historical performance and allow you to answer the most important investment evaluation question: did this perform better or worse than the alternative I would have chosen? That alternative — for most long-term investors — is a broadly diversified low-cost equity index fund, which has historically produced a CAGR of approximately 8–10% annually over extended periods. Any investment you evaluate can be immediately benchmarked against this reference point by comparing its CAGR to this range.
The calculator is equally useful for forward-looking scenarios. By entering a projected final value based on an assumed future rate, you can model what a current investment might be worth at a target date, how much a specific lump sum would need to grow to meet a future financial goal, or how your actual historical return rate translates into a projected balance over an extended holding period. Use the growth chart in both directions — historical analysis and future projection — to inform both your assessment of past decisions and your planning for future ones.
📊 The Most Important Benchmark: A broadly diversified global equity index fund — one that tracks the overall stock market rather than selecting individual companies — has historically produced a CAGR of approximately 8–10% annually over long periods, after fees. This is the benchmark that every active investment strategy, every alternative asset, and every fund you evaluate should be compared against. An investment producing a CAGR below this range over a long period represents underperformance relative to the simplest and cheapest available alternative.
Total ROI and CAGR both measure return, but they answer different questions and are appropriate in different contexts. Use total ROI when you want to communicate the overall outcome of a specific investment in the most direct and universally understood format — "this investment returned 85% in total" is immediately understandable to anyone. Use CAGR when you want to compare the performance of two or more investments held for different periods, or when you want to understand whether the annual return rate is competitive with alternative uses of the capital. A 200% total ROI sounds impressive — but if it took 20 years to achieve, the CAGR is approximately 5.6% annually, which underperforms a diversified equity index fund over the same period.
The growth multiple is the simplest summary of an investment's return: if your growth multiple is 3.2x, every dollar you invested returned $3.20. This format is particularly useful for comparing very different investments — a real estate transaction, a stock portfolio, a business stake — where dollar amounts and timeframes differ substantially. It also scales intuitively: a 2x multiple means your money doubled; a 5x multiple means it quintupled. Watching the growth multiple change as you extend the time horizon slider on a projected scenario is one of the clearest visual demonstrations of what long-term compounding actually produces in practice.
All metrics produced by this calculator are pre-tax and pre-fee. Your actual after-cost return depends on your tax jurisdiction, the type of account holding the investment (taxable versus tax-advantaged), the duration of your holding period (which affects capital gains tax treatment in many countries), and the annual fees charged by your investment platform or fund. For a realistic after-cost picture of any investment, reduce the final value by estimated capital gains tax on the realised gain and by the cumulative management fees paid over the holding period. The resulting net figure represents your genuine return on the capital you committed.
This calculator is most useful when used consistently across all investments you make or evaluate — building a habit of measuring actual return rather than relying on impression or memory. Consistent measurement reveals patterns in your decision-making that lead to better future choices.
Input the complete amount you originally invested — the purchase price plus any fees paid at entry, including brokerage commissions, stamp duty, or transaction costs. Using the correct total cost basis rather than just the nominal purchase price is essential for an accurate return calculation.
For an ongoing investment, use the current market value shown on your account statement today. For a completed investment, use total proceeds received, net of any selling costs. Include reinvested dividends in the final value figure if you want to calculate total return — the most comprehensive and meaningful return measure.
Specify how many years the investment has been held. Partial years can be entered as decimals — 2.5 for two and a half years, 0.75 for nine months. The holding period is required for an accurate CAGR calculation and must be entered carefully, as small errors in this figure produce disproportionate errors in the annualised return calculation.
Note your calculated CAGR and compare it to the approximate 8–10% historical annual return of a diversified equity index fund. If your investment outperforms this benchmark over a meaningful period, that is genuine excess return. If it underperforms, the calculator helps you quantify the cost of that underperformance in dollar terms — what the same capital would have become in a passive index fund over the same period.
The growth chart extends the calculated CAGR forward to illustrate where continued compounding at the same rate would take your balance. This is a planning illustration — actual future returns will differ — but it provides a useful reference for how your current investment rate of return translates into long-term wealth accumulation.
Reduce the final value by estimated capital gains tax and cumulative fees paid before calculating your net return. The pre-tax, pre-fee figures from this calculator represent the gross investment performance. The after-cost figures represent your genuine financial outcome and are the only ones that matter for your personal financial position.