Enter your numbers to calculate the compound annual growth rate
What is CAGR?
CAGR — Compound Annual Growth Rate — is the average yearly growth rate of an investment over a period of time, ignoring market volatility. Unlike simple returns that bounce up and down each year, CAGR gives you one clean number: the steady rate at which your money would have grown.
For example, if you invested $10,000 and it grew to $16,000 over 5 years, the total return is 60% — but the CAGR is about 9.86% per year. That is the smoothed rate that gets you from $10,000 to $16,000 in exactly 5 years.
CAGR is the standard way to measure investment performance because it removes the noise of year-to-year swings. A stock might be up 30% one year and down 15% the next — its CAGR cuts through that and tells you what the average annual growth actually was.
For context: the S&P 500 has historically returned about 10% CAGR over the long term. If your CAGR is above that, you are outperforming the market. Use our ROI Calculator if you need a simple return for a single period instead.
How to use this calculator
Beginning Value. Enter the starting value of your investment or business metric. This is the amount at the beginning of the period you want to measure.
Ending Value. Enter the final value at the end of the period. The difference between your ending and beginning values is your absolute growth.
Number of Years. Enter how many years passed between the beginning and ending values. You can use decimal values for partial years — for example, 3.5 for three years and six months.
Forecast mode. Switch to Forecast mode to project a future value. Enter your starting amount, an expected CAGR, and a time period to see what your investment could be worth.