ROI Calculator
Enter what you invested and what you got back to see your return on investment (ROI), net profit, and return multiple in seconds. Add a holding period — in years or dates — to also get annualized ROI. Works in any currency.
Holding period (optional)
Year-by-year growth schedule
| Year | Value |
|---|
Some values were above the allowed range and were capped for this calculation.
This is an arithmetic calculation, not investment advice.
Every calculation runs in your browser — nothing is sent to a server.
ROI, net profit, and return multiple — what each number tells you
Return on investment collapses everything you put into a deal and everything you got out of it into a single ratio, so a $5 investment and a $5,000,000 investment can be compared on the same percentage scale. Net profit is the plain currency answer to "how much richer am I" — no ratio, just the money. Return multiple restates the same result as a multiplier of your original stake, which is often how investors and founders talk about a deal informally ("it returned 2.5x"). This calculator gives you all three from the same two inputs, then adds a fourth — annualized ROI — the moment you tell it how long the money was tied up.
How to read the two required inputs
- Amount invested is everything the deal cost you, not just the sticker price — fold in commissions, closing costs, or fees you paid to get in, since they were still money you committed.
- Amount returned is everything you got back, net of any costs to get out — sale proceeds after selling fees, total revenue, or the current value if you're marking an open position to market.
- Leave the holding period blank if you only need ROI, net profit, and the return multiple for a single completed transaction.
- Fill in a holding period — as a number of years or as start/end dates — only when you want to compare this result against a different-length investment on a per-year basis.
- Currency only changes how net profit and the year-by-year schedule are formatted; ROI itself is a dimensionless percentage.
The ROI formula
ROI = (Amount returned − Amount invested) ÷ Amount invested × 100
The numerator — amount returned minus amount invested — is your net profit in the same currency you entered. Dividing by the amount invested rescales that profit against your original stake, and multiplying by 100 turns the ratio into a percentage. Because it's a ratio of profit to cost, ROI carries no unit of time on its own — a 40% ROI could describe a trade that took three weeks or a project that took three years, which is exactly the gap annualized ROI closes.
Worked example: a property flip, including costs
You buy a property for 200,000 and pay 8,000 in closing costs, so amount invested = 208,000. You sell it 2.5 years later for 260,000 after 6,000 in selling costs, so amount returned = 254,000. Net profit = 254,000 − 208,000 = 46,000. ROI = 46,000 ÷ 208,000 × 100 ≈ 22.12%, and the return multiple is 254,000 ÷ 208,000 ≈ 1.22×. Fed through the 2.5-year holding period, annualized ROI ≈ 8.32% per year — the number you'd actually compare against a savings rate or another investment's yearly pace.
From ROI to annualized ROI
Annualized ROI = (Amount returned ÷ Amount invested)^(1 ÷ years) − 1
Amount returned ÷ amount invested is the same growth multiple shown in the results — 1.22× in the example above. Raising it to the power of 1 ÷ years spreads that multiple evenly across every year of the holding period instead of crediting it all to a single point in time; subtracting 1 and multiplying by 100 converts the result back into a percentage. In dates mode, "years" is the exact number of days between your two dates divided by 365.25, so a 2-year-and-7-month hold is annualized on its real length, not rounded to 2 or 3 years.
How ROI's annualized figure differs from CAGR
Annualized ROI and CAGR (compound annual growth rate) use the identical exponent formula — (end ÷ start)^(1/years) − 1 — so for the same two amounts and the same period, they will always agree to the last decimal. What differs is the entry point and the default output. A CAGR calculator is built around a beginning value and an ending value and always centers on the yearly rate, because it's typically used to track something you already held and watched over time — a stock position, a portfolio, a company's revenue. This ROI calculator starts from "amount invested" and "amount returned," language that fits a single completed transaction — a project, a flip, a one-off deal — where the period is optional because the first thing you usually want to know is simply "did this pay off, and by how much," not "at what yearly pace." Add the holding period here and you get the exact same annualized figure a CAGR calculator would give you; leave it out and you still get the plain ROI, net profit, and return multiple that a pure growth-rate tool doesn't surface by default.
Same ROI, different annualized rate depending on holding period
Because the exponent divides by the number of years, one fixed ROI maps to a very different annualized ROI depending on how long it took to earn. The table below holds a 200% ROI (the investment triples — return multiple 3×) constant and only changes the holding period:
| Holding period | Total ROI | Return multiple | Annualized ROI |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 year | 200% | 3.00× | 200.00% |
| 2 years | 200% | 3.00× | 73.21% |
| 3 years | 200% | 3.00× | 44.22% |
| 5 years | 200% | 3.00× | 24.57% |
| 10 years | 200% | 3.00× | 11.61% |
The 1-year row is the only case where plain ROI and annualized ROI match — beyond one year, annualized ROI is always lower than the total ROI it was derived from.
Common mistakes and things people overlook
- Leaving out fees on either side. Commissions, closing costs, and taxes paid to enter or exit a deal are real cash outlays — fold them into amount invested or subtract them from amount returned so ROI reflects what you actually kept.
- Comparing raw ROI across different holding periods. A 60% ROI over six months and a 60% ROI over four years are not equally good — switch on the holding period and compare the annualized figures instead.
- Treating an amount returned of 0 as a bug. Losing the entire investment is a real, valid outcome and correctly shows −100% ROI — the calculator isn't wrong, the deal was.
- Feeding it a multi-cash-flow deal. This formula assumes one lump sum in and one lump sum out. If you added or withdrew money partway through — like periodic contributions to a portfolio — a two-point ROI or annualized ROI will misstate the real performance; that needs a money-weighted measure instead.
- Reading annualized ROI as a forecast. It summarizes a rate that already happened between two known points in the past — it doesn't promise the same pace will continue.
What this calculator doesn't cover
ROI and annualized ROI here are computed exactly as entered — the tool doesn't automatically deduct taxes, inflation, or fees unless you've already folded them into amount invested or amount returned yourself, and it doesn't handle deals with more than one contribution or withdrawal date. It also doesn't account for risk: two deals can post the same ROI while one was a predictable, low-volatility arrangement and the other swung wildly before landing on the same number. Treat every result as an arithmetic summary of what already happened, not investment advice and not a projection of what will happen next.
Sources & further reading
- SEC Investor.gov — official U.S. investor education on returns, compounding and fees
- Consumer Financial Protection Bureau — plain-language guidance on evaluating financial products
- IRS Topic No. 409 — how capital gains and losses affect your net return
- Khan Academy Finance & Capital Markets — free lessons on interest, growth rates and ROI math
Frequently asked questions
What is ROI, and what is the exact formula with a worked example?
ROI (return on investment) is your profit expressed as a percentage of what you put in: ROI = (Amount returned − Amount invested) ÷ Amount invested × 100. Worked example: you invest 10,000 and get back 25,000. The net profit is 25,000 − 10,000 = 15,000; divide by the 10,000 you invested to get 1.5, then multiply by 100 for a 150% ROI. As a return on investment calculator this tool shows the same result three ways at once — a 150% ROI, a 15,000 net profit, and a 2.5× return multiple — so this roi calculator makes the number easy to read however you think about it.
ROI vs annualized ROI — why isn't the same ROI over 1 year and 5 years equally good?
A plain ROI ignores time: turning 10,000 into 25,000 is a 150% ROI whether it took one year or five, but those are very different investments. Annualized ROI fixes this by spreading the growth evenly across the holding period, using the same math as CAGR: annualized ROI = (Amount returned ÷ Amount invested)^(1 ÷ years) − 1. That 150% total is a 150% annualized ROI over 1 year, but only about 20.11% per year over 5 years. That is why this annualized roi calculator asks for an optional holding period — so you can compare a quick flip and a long hold on the same yearly scale.
The holding period is optional — how do years, dates, and leap years work?
You get ROI, net profit, and the return multiple from just the amount invested and the amount returned — no period needed. Add a holding period only when you also want annualized ROI. Type the number of years directly (decimals allowed, so 3.5 works) or switch to the dates tab and enter a start and end date; in date mode this investment return calculator counts the exact days between them and divides by 365.25, the average length of a year including leap years, so a span that crosses February 29 is measured correctly instead of rounded to whole years. Any positive period — half a year or 7.3 years — is annualized just as precisely.
Can ROI be negative, and why does an amount returned of 0 show −100%?
Yes. If you get back less than you invested, ROI is negative — a real loss shown in red, with a net profit below zero. If the amount returned is exactly 0 you have lost everything, so ROI = (0 − Amount invested) ÷ Amount invested × 100 = −100%, the net profit equals your whole investment as a loss, and the return multiple is 0×. With a holding period the annualized ROI is −100% too, because 0 raised to any positive power stays 0. That is a correct answer, not an error, so this net profit calculator labels it clearly. An amount invested of 0 or a negative amount returned has no meaningful ROI, so the tool asks you to fix those inputs instead of returning a misleading number.
Is the math currency-agnostic, is anything sent to a server, and is this investment advice?
ROI is a percentage, so the figure itself is the same in any currency; only the net profit and the year-by-year schedule carry a currency, and those are formatted with your locale's grouping, symbol and decimal places through Intl — nothing is hard-coded. Every calculation in this roi calculator runs entirely in your browser: no login, no account, and no prices fetched from any market feed — you type every value yourself, and your last entry is saved only in your browser's local storage. And this is an arithmetic calculation, not investment advice: it tells you the math of a return, not whether to buy, hold or sell.