CAGR Calculator
The smooth yearly rate that joins a starting value to an ending one.
Everything runs inside your browser. Your files never leave your device.
Result
Ask about CAGR Calculator
Questions about what this tool does, which option to pick, or what it can and cannot handle.
The question you type here is sent to an AI provider to be answered — your files and whatever you put in the tool above are not, and the assistant cannot see them. Answers are generated and can be wrong. The tool itself is not guessing: it runs deterministic code on your device.
About the CAGR Calculator
Compound annual growth rate is the single steady rate that would have carried a starting value to an ending value over a given period. It is a summary, not a description — it says nothing whatsoever about what happened in between.
That distinction is the reason CAGR is both useful and routinely abused. An investment that rose forty per cent, fell thirty, then rose fifty over three years has a perfectly respectable CAGR, and reading only that number would leave you unprepared for the year you would have spent thirty per cent down. Two investments with identical CAGRs can have wildly different experiences attached to them, and the one with the smoother path is worth more to most people than the arithmetic suggests.
The tool prints the absolute return beside the annualised one, which is the comparison most people actually need. Doubling your money sounds impressive until you notice it took twelve years, at which point the annualised figure of about six per cent puts it in perspective against a fixed deposit. Conversely a modest-sounding forty per cent total is a strong result over eighteen months.
There is one thing CAGR cannot do, and it is worth being explicit about. It only works where money went in once and came out once. The moment you add or withdraw along the way — which is what every monthly investment plan does — the two endpoints stop containing enough information, and the figure you want is XIRR instead. Using CAGR on a plan with ongoing contributions produces a number that is not merely imprecise but meaningless.
How to use it
- 1Enter the value you started with and the value you ended with.
- 2Set the period between them, in years — decimals are fine for part-years.
- 3Read the annualised rate, then check the absolute return beside it for context.
- 4If money went in or out during the period, stop and use XIRR instead.
Questions
- What counts as a good CAGR?
- It depends entirely on what you are comparing against and over what period. Judge it against an index over the same window and against what a deposit would have paid, rather than against a number someone quoted you.
- Why can't I use this for a monthly investment plan?
- Because each instalment was invested for a different length of time, and two endpoints cannot encode that. XIRR takes the dates and amounts of every flow and solves for the rate that reconciles them all.
- Does CAGR account for volatility?
- Not at all, and that is its main limitation. It is the smooth line drawn between two points, and the actual path is invisible to it.
- Can it be negative?
- Yes, whenever the ending value is below the starting one. The tool handles that and reports the rate as negative rather than refusing the calculation.