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CAGR Calculator

Find the steady yearly growth rate between two values, what an investment grows to at a rate, or how long it takes to reach a target.

Runs entirely in your browser. Nothing you enter is uploaded or stored.

Your investment

The answer updates as you type

What do you want to know?

10 thousand

25 thousand

Period

Compare periods

To see the CAGR over 1, 3 and 5 years side by side, add what it was worth on those dates.

Your currency and how the table groups years are remembered on this device only.

Your growth rate

12.14% a year

$10,000 grew to $25,000 in 8 years: 2.50 times as much.

Total return
+150.00%the whole period
Growth
$15,00015 thousand
Multiple
2.50×the starting value

Things to know

  • Dividing +150.00% by 8 years would say 18.75% a year

    That ignores compounding: each year's growth builds on the last. The steady rate that really turns $10,000 into $25,000 is 12.14% a year.

  • After rising prices, it grew 8.87% a year

    If prices rose % a year, the $25,000 at the end buys what $19,735 did at the start: real growth of 8.87% a year.

  • At 12.14% a year, money doubles every 6.1 years

    The rule of 72 gives a quick estimate without a calculator: 72 ÷ 12.14 = 5.9 years.

What if it keeps growing 12.14% a year?

In another 8 years

$62,521

From $25,000 now.

To double to $50,000

6 years 1 month

6.05 years from now.

Growth over time

  • Steady growth at 12.14%
  • At 10.14% to 14.14%

Hover, tap or drag to see any month. With the keyboard, use the arrow keys (Shift for a year).

Year by year

The steady path at this rate, starting from $10,000. A real investment moves up and down along the way.

YearValue at the end
Year 1
$11,214+$1,214 in the year
Year 2
$12,574+$1,361 in the year
Year 3
$14,100+$1,526 in the year
Year 4
$15,811+$1,711 in the year
Year 5
$17,730+$1,919 in the year
Year 6
$19,882+$2,152 in the year
Year 7
$22,294+$2,413 in the year
Year 8
$25,000+$2,706 in the year

How we work it out: CAGR = (ending value ÷ starting value)^(1 ÷ years) − 1 = (25,000 ÷ 10,000)^(1 ÷ 8) − 1 = 12.14%. The chart and table show the steady path at that rate; a real investment goes up and down along the way.

Also try:SIP CalculatorCompound Interest CalculatorSWP Calculator

How to use the CAGR Calculator

  1. 1Choose what you want to know, the growth rate, what a value grows to, or how long a target takes, then fill in the values.
  2. 2Enter the period as a number of years, or switch to Dates and pick the start and end dates.
  3. 3Read the answer at the top, then the notes under it on growth after rising prices, how long money takes to double and what 2% more or less would do.
  4. 4To compare periods, use dates and add what the investment was worth in between, such as 1, 3 and 5 years before the end.
  5. 5Copy the link to bookmark or share your numbers, and download the year-by-year table as a CSV file.

The formulas

CAGR is derived by working backward from the total growth over the whole period to a single annual rate:

CAGR = (Ending value / Starting value)^(1 / years) − 1

Raising the total growth ratio to the power of one-over-years is what “undoes” however many years of compounding to isolate the single rate that, applied repeatedly, produces that ratio. It’s the same math as compound interest, run in reverse: instead of a rate you already know, you’re solving for the rate that must have applied.

The calculator’s other two questions run the same formula the other way round:

Ending value = Starting value × (1 + rate)^years
Years        = ln(Target / Starting value) ÷ ln(1 + rate)

With dates instead of a number of years, the years are the days between the two dates divided by 365.

A worked example

Say $100.00 grew to $200.00 in 5 years.

  1. Divide the ending value by the starting value: 200 ÷ 100 = 2. It doubled.
  2. Raise that to the power of 1 ÷ 5 = 0.2: 20.2 = 1.1487.
  3. Subtract 1: 0.1487, a CAGR of 14.87% a year.

Growing 14.87% every year gets there exactly:

AfterValue
1 year$114.87
2 years$131.95
3 years$151.57
4 years$174.11
5 years$200.00

Dividing the 100% total return by 5 years would say 20% a year, which overstates it: at 20% a year, $100.00 would become $248.83, not $200.00. Enter these numbers in the calculator above and you'll get the same 14.87%.

Why CAGR smooths out a bumpy path

A real investment, business, or metric rarely grows at a constant rate: some years are up sharply, some are flat, some go backward. CAGR ignores all of that internal variation and reports only the beginning and ending points, as if growth had been perfectly smooth. That’s exactly what makes it useful for comparison (it reduces a messy multi-year story to one number) and exactly what it can’t tell you (how volatile or risky the actual path was to get there). Two investments can have an identical CAGR while one moved in a straight line and the other swung wildly.

That’s also why a single CAGR can hide a lot. Comparing several periods that end on the same date, such as the last 1, 3 and 5 years, shows whether growth has been speeding up or slowing down: a fund with a strong 5-year CAGR and a weak 1-year one tells a different story from one that’s steady across all three.

Reading the chart and the yearly table

The chart and the table show what the value would be at each point if it had grown at exactly the CAGR every year: a smooth path with the same start and end as your real numbers. With values in between, the chart also marks where the investment really was on those dates, so you can see how far the real path strayed from the smooth one.

With dates, the table can count years from your start date, or follow calendar years (January to December). In rupees it can also follow India’s financial year (April to March). A first or last row that isn’t a full year says how long it covers.

Questions

What does CAGR actually measure?
CAGR answers one specific question: what single, constant annual growth rate would take the starting value to the ending value over the given number of years, if it grew smoothly every year? It's a summary number, not a description of what actually happened year to year: the real path almost certainly went up and down along the way.
Why isn't CAGR the same as averaging the yearly returns?
Because compounding isn't linear: a 50% loss followed by a 100% gain averages to +25% a year, but the value only gets back to where it started, a 0% CAGR. For the same reason, dividing the total return by the number of years overstates growth: 100 doubling to 200 in 5 years is a 100% total return, but 20% a year would turn 100 into 248.83, not 200. The real steady rate is 14.87%.
What's the difference between CAGR and XIRR?
CAGR uses one starting value and one ending value, so it fits a single lump sum. If you invested in instalments, such as a SIP, or took money out along the way, each amount was invested for a different length of time and CAGR would mislead you: XIRR weighs every payment by its own date. For one lump sum with nothing added or taken out, the two give the same answer, because this calculator counts dated periods the way XIRR does, as the days between them ÷ 365. IRR is the same idea as XIRR for payments at regular intervals.
What's the difference between CAGR and absolute return?
Absolute return is the total change over the whole period: 10,000 growing to 25,000 is a 150% absolute return. It ignores time, so 150% over 3 years and over 15 years look the same. CAGR spreads that change over the years as a steady yearly rate: 150% over 8 years is 12.14% a year. Fund statements in India usually show absolute return for periods under a year and CAGR for longer ones, and this calculator does the same when it compares periods.
How are dates turned into years?
The number of days between the two dates is divided by 365, the same way the XIRR function in Excel or Google Sheets counts time. 3 March 2021 to 1 July 2023 is 850 days, or 2.33 years. You can also type fractional years directly, such as 2.5.
How do I compare 1, 3 and 5 year returns?
Switch the period to Dates, then add what the investment was worth on other dates with Add a value. The first one suggested is a year before the end date, then 3, 5 and 10 years before. The calculator shows the CAGR from each of those dates to the end date side by side, the way a fund statement does. A period under a year shows only its total change, since a yearly rate would stretch a few months' move into a whole year.
Can CAGR be negative?
Yes: enter an ending value lower than the starting value and CAGR will come out negative, which correctly describes a value that shrank overall, even if some individual years within that period grew. This calculator handles a decline the same way it handles growth.
What if my investment went to zero?
Enter 0 as the ending value and you'll get −100%, which is the correct annual growth rate for a total loss no matter how many years it took. A starting value of zero isn't allowed, because there's no way to measure growth from nothing. An empty field is never read as 0: the calculator asks you to fill it in.
What's a "good" CAGR?
It depends entirely on what you're comparing and over what period: a savings account, a stock, and revenue at a startup have completely different realistic ranges, and a rate that's excellent for one is unremarkable for another. CAGR is most useful for comparing two specific things on equal footing (this fund vs. that fund, this year's growth vs. last decade's), not as a number with an absolute quality on its own. Compare it with inflation too: the notes under the answer show the growth left after rising prices.
Is my financial information sent anywhere?
No. Every calculation happens in this browser tab and nothing you enter is uploaded or logged. Your numbers are kept in the page's link (the part after the #), so you can bookmark or share them, and browsers don't send that part to any website. The currency you pick and how the table groups years are kept on this device only, so every money calculator here opens the same way; Forget my settings removes them.