ROI Calculator

Return on investment (ROI) is the single most common way to express how profitable an investment was. It's the net gain divided by the amount you put in, shown as a percentage: put in 1,000, get back 1,300, and your ROI is 30%. It works for anything you can measure in money — stocks, a rental property, a marketing campaign, a piece of equipment, a side project.

Its strength is simplicity and comparability: a percentage lets you line up very different investments side by side. Its weakness is that plain ROI ignores time — a 30% return is excellent over one year and mediocre over ten. That's why this calculator also gives you the annualised figure.

Annualised ROI converts a total return into an equivalent yearly rate, so investments held for different lengths of time become truly comparable. A 30% total return over two years is about 14% per year; the same 30% over five years is only about 5.4% per year. Without annualising, you'd wrongly rank them as equal.

This matters whenever you're choosing between opportunities or judging performance against a benchmark like a savings account or an index fund. The annualised rate is the number to compare; the total ROI just tells you the raw outcome. The calculator computes both from your figures, entirely in your browser.

A clean ROI number hides real-world costs. It doesn't automatically include transaction fees, taxes, or the ongoing costs of holding an asset — all of which reduce your true return. For a realistic picture, use your actual net proceeds (after fees and tax) as the amount returned.

ROI also says nothing about risk. A high expected return usually comes with a higher chance of loss, and ROI measured after the fact doesn't capture the uncertainty you took on. Treat it as one input among several — alongside risk, liquidity and time — rather than the whole story. The calculation stays on your device; nothing is sent anywhere.