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Investment Return Calculator

Project a lump sum plus regular contributions, with the compounding frequency, the start-versus-end-of-period timing, inflation and tax.

Related tools

All Investing & markets tools →
Holding Period Return CalculatorMeasure the total return over a holding period from the beginning and ending value plus any income, with the annualised equivalent.Real Rate of Return CalculatorStrip inflation out of a nominal return with the exact Fisher equation, and see how far the simple subtraction is off.Inflation-adjusted return calculatorCompute the real (inflation-adjusted) return from a nominal return and inflation rate.Capital Gains Yield CalculatorCompute the capital gains yield from the purchase and current price, with dividend yield, total return and the annualised equivalent.Dividend Payout Ratio CalculatorTwo ways in — total dividends over net income, or DPS over EPS — with the retention ratio as its complement and what each level implies.Dividend Reinvestment (DRIP) CalculatorMonth-by-month DRIP with price appreciation, dividend growth, tax and contributions — and the DRIP advantage.Effective Yield CalculatorConvert a nominal rate into the effective annual yield for any compounding frequency, with APR and APY side by side.EPS Calculator (Earnings Per Share)Basic and diluted earnings per share from net income, preferred dividends and share counts.

Investment Return Calculator works straight from this page — free, instant, nothing to install. It sits under Investing & markets in our catalogue, alongside Holding Period Return Calculator and Real Rate of Return Calculator.

How to use it

  1. Open the tool — no signup or install needed.
  2. Enter your input or adjust the available options.
  3. Get your result instantly, then copy or download it.

Frequently asked questions

What does Investment Return Calculator do?

Project a lump sum plus regular contributions, with the compounding frequency, the start-versus-end-of-period timing, inflation and tax.

When would I actually use this?

Comparing two investments that pay at different times, deciding whether a project clears its cost of capital, and sanity-checking a valuation someone else produced.

What is the most common mistake?

Trusting a valuation without asking what share of it comes from the terminal value. Past 70%, the answer is an assumption about the distant future dressed up as a calculation.

How is Investment Return Calculator different from Holding Period Return Calculator?

They sit next to each other but answer different questions: Holding Period Return Calculator is the one to open when you need it to measure the total return over a holding period from the beginning and ending value plus any income, with the annualised equivalent. Pick whichever matches what you're starting from — both are free.

Is there a tool for the next step?

Real Rate of Return Calculator is the closest one after this: Strip inflation out of a nominal return with the exact Fisher equation, and see how far the simple subtraction is off.

What else is worth having open alongside it?

Inflation-adjusted return calculator and Capital Gains Yield Calculator — they come up in the same task often enough to be worth a second tab.

Where do the figures come from?

Discounting, IRR and payback are defined identically everywhere, so the arithmetic is not in dispute — the assumptions you feed it are. Change the discount rate by a point and re-read the answer.

Further reading

All guides →
ExplainerWhat an Investment Return Number Is Not Telling YouA fund can return 9.49 percent a year while its investor earns −1.77 percent. Time-weighted versus money-weighted, nominal versus real, gross versus net — four questions inside one number, separated with arithmetic.ComparisonReal vs Nominal Return: Why Subtracting Inflation Is the Wrong AnswerAt 7 percent nominal and 3 percent inflation the real return is 3.883 percent, not 4. The Fisher equation divides, it does not subtract — and over 30 years the shortcut overstates a $10,000 pot by $1,072.ExplainerDollar-Cost Averaging: What It Actually Buys YouSpending a fixed amount each period buys more units when the price is low, so your average cost is the harmonic mean of the prices while the average price is the arithmetic mean — always lower, by 4.10 percent on the path worked through here. Against a lump sum, a 200,000-path simulation puts DCA's standard deviation 41 percent lower and its expected terminal wealth $337 lower on $12,000.ExplainerVolatility Is Not Risk, and the Square Root of Time Is a ChoiceAnnualised volatility = period standard deviation × √(periods per year), and that √t scaling assumes independent increments. It is a model, not arithmetic: at a daily autocorrelation of 0.1 a 60 percent annualised figure should read 66.3. The payload is volatility drag — the arithmetic mean exceeds the geometric by about σ²/2, so at 8 percent average return and 40 percent volatility the compound outcome is zero.ExplainerThe Sharpe Ratio, and What It Quietly AssumesSharpe = (return − risk-free) ÷ standard deviation, so it prices return per unit of volatility — and volatility is symmetric. Two funds can share a Sharpe of 0.4939 while their Sortino ratios are 8.59 and 0.74. Annualising by √12 assumes independent returns: at an autocorrelation of 0.2 the published figure is 20 percent too high.ExplainerThe Two Nisabs, and Why They No Longer AgreeZakat is 2.5 percent of qualifying wealth held for a lunar year — but the threshold at which it becomes due has two classical definitions, one in gold and one in silver, and today they differ by roughly a factor of twelve. Here is why, and what each side argues.