Investment Return Calculator: ROI, CAGR & XIRR
Calculate the return on any investment. Use simple mode for a single initial-to-final value, or XIRR mode for irregular contributions and withdrawals over time.
Investment Return Calculator
Get CAGR and absolute return from a simple start and end value, or XIRR across irregular cash flows.
CAGR = (final / initial)^(1/years) – 1, using a 365.25 day year. XIRR solves for the rate that makes the net present value of all dated cash flows equal zero, via Newton-Raphson with a bisection fallback. Neither figure accounts for tax or transaction costs.
How the investment return calculator turns raw numbers into CAGR and XIRR
Two people can put money into the same fund and walk away with different real answers about how well it performed, because the word return means different things depending on whether money went in once or in pieces over time. This tool handles both cases with two separate modes, and it runs entirely in your browser. No amount, date, or cash flow you type is sent anywhere.
Simple mode: one deposit, one exit value
When you put in a lump sum and pulled out a final value on a known date, the tool computes three numbers side by side. Absolute return is the plain percentage gain with no time dimension attached. CAGR, the compound annual growth rate, spreads that same gain evenly across the holding period so you can compare a two year trade against a ten year one on equal footing.
Worked example, using the tool’s own default figures: a $10,000 initial investment grew to $16,500 over exactly three years. Absolute return comes out to 65%. CAGR is the cube root of 1.65 minus one, which lands at roughly 18.17% a year. The gap between those two numbers is the entire point of running CAGR at all.
| Metric | Example value | What it answers |
|---|---|---|
| Total gain | $6,500 | How many dollars did I make |
| Absolute return | 65.0% | What percent did the value rise, ignoring time |
| CAGR | 18.17% | What steady annual rate produces the same result |
| Money multiple | 1.65× | How many times my capital did I end up with |
XIRR mode: irregular deposits and withdrawals
Real portfolios rarely move in one clean lump sum. You add money on random dates, maybe withdraw some, and want a single annualized rate that accounts for the exact timing of every flow. That is what XIRR solves for. There is no algebraic formula for it, so the tool finds the rate numerically.
The solver starts with a 10% guess and runs Newton Raphson: it evaluates XNPV at the current rate, estimates the slope using a tiny nudge of 0.000001, and steps toward the rate where XNPV crosses zero. Up to 100 iterations run, stopping early once consecutive guesses differ by less than 0.0000001. If that process fails to settle, or the final XNPV is still off by more than a dollar, the tool falls back to bisection between negative 99.9% and 1000% return, narrowing the bracket for 200 rounds until it pins the root down.
Example: you invest $10,000 today and receive $12,500 back exactly two years later, nothing in between. Setting negative 10,000 plus 12,500 divided by (1 plus rate) squared equal to zero and solving gives a rate near 11.8% annualized, noticeably different from the 25% absolute return those two numbers imply on their own.
What each mode assumes
Day counting
Both modes use actual calendar days between dates, not a rounded month count, then divide by 365 or 365.25 depending on the calculation. This matters most for short holding periods.
No fees or taxes modeled
Figures you enter are treated as net cash in your hands. Brokerage fees, taxes, or currency conversion are not subtracted automatically.
Current value as a cash flow
For XIRR, if you have not sold yet, enter today’s market value as a positive flow dated today. That is standard practice for measuring an open position’s annualized return.
This calculator is a math tool, not financial guidance. It reports what your numbers imply mathematically, nothing about what to buy or sell next.
Return measurement standards
- Investopedia on CAGR covers the formula and its common misuses as a smoothing device.
- Internal rate of return explains the general IRR concept that XIRR extends to irregular dates.
- Microsoft’s XIRR function reference documents the same Newton Raphson approach spreadsheets use.
- Newton’s method is the root-finding algorithm behind the solver, useful if you want to implement your own.
Comparisons people run
Comparing a single stock’s buy and sell price against a savings account rate, sanity checking a real estate flip after a renovation, working out the true annualized yield of a portfolio you topped up several times a year, and pressure testing a pitch deck’s stated return by rederiving it from the deal’s actual cash flow dates. Anywhere money moves on its own schedule, XIRR is the number that tells the truth.
Frequently Asked Questions
ROI (Return on Investment), often used interchangeably with Absolute Return here, measures total percentage gain over the entire holding period without regard to time: a 50% return could come from one year or ten years. CAGR (Compound Annual Growth Rate) converts that total return into an equivalent constant annual growth rate, making it possible to fairly compare a two-year investment against a ten-year investment. A $10,000 investment that grows to $20,000 has a 100% ROI regardless of timeframe, but its CAGR is about 26% over three years versus about 7.2% over ten years.
XIRR (Extended Internal Rate of Return) calculates the annualized return for a series of cash flows that occur on irregular dates and in irregular amounts, such as multiple SIP contributions, top-ups, and partial withdrawals. CAGR only works cleanly for a single investment made at one point in time and cashed out at another; if you’ve added or removed money along the way, XIRR is the mathematically correct way to measure your actual annualized return.
XIRR finds the discount rate r that makes the net present value of all cash flows equal to zero: the sum of each cash flow divided by (1+r) raised to the power of (days since the first cash flow ÷ 365). Since this equation generally can’t be solved algebraically, the calculator uses the Newton-Raphson iterative method, which repeatedly refines a guess for r using the function’s slope, falling back to a bisection search if Newton-Raphson doesn’t converge cleanly.
XIRR treats cash flows from your perspective as an investor: money leaving your pocket to make an investment is a negative (outflow), and money coming back to you, whether through withdrawals, dividends, or the final value if you sold today, is a positive (inflow). Getting the signs right is essential, since XIRR requires at least one negative and one positive cash flow to find a valid solution, mixing up the signs will produce a meaningless or impossible result.
This varies enormously by asset class and risk level. Broad equity markets have historically returned a CAGR in the range of 7 to 10% over multi-decade periods in nominal terms, government bonds have historically returned considerably less, and real estate returns vary widely by location and leverage used. Individual investments and short time periods can show CAGRs far outside these ranges in either direction, so always weigh a CAGR figure against the volatility and risk taken to achieve it.
Yes, the calculator works for any asset where you can identify an initial value (or a series of contributions) and a final or current value, whether that’s shares, cryptocurrency, a rental property, or a small business investment. For a rental property, remember to include any income received (rent) and expenses paid (renovations, taxes) as additional cash flows in XIRR mode for an accurate total return figure.
No, by default the calculator only uses the values and dates you enter. If you want a return figure net of fees or taxes, subtract them from your final value or add them as separate outflows before calculating. If you received dividends or other income along the way, you can add each dividend as a small positive cash flow on its payment date in XIRR mode to include it in your true annualized return.
A negative CAGR simply means your final value is lower than your initial value, indicating a loss over the period measured, which is mathematically valid and calculated the same way as a positive CAGR. If your final value is exactly zero (a total loss), CAGR is mathematically undefined as negative 100%, since no compounding rate can turn a positive amount into exactly zero over any finite period other than a complete loss.
Yes, if your cash flows span a very short period (a few weeks or months) with a meaningful gain or loss, the annualized XIRR can appear extreme even though the absolute dollar gain was modest, because annualizing naturally amplifies short-period returns. Always look at both the XIRR percentage and the actual dollar total invested and received to get the full picture, rather than judging a short-term investment purely on its annualized rate.
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