CAGR Calculator
The two values are all this pane needs. Nothing is fetched and no ticker is looked up — the numbers are yours.
One box per year, in the order they happened. Same starting value as the pane on the left, so the two can be read against each other.
| Year | Return that year | Value at the end of it |
|---|
How to read the two numbers
The first is the rate that connects the two values. Its full name is the compound annual growth rate, and the name carries the definition: the rate the money compounded at, quoted per year. It is the single yearly rate that, applied every year for the length you gave, takes the starting value to the ending value. On this page's defaults — 10,000.00 growing to 15,000.00 over five years — that rate is 8.45%. Nothing about the years in between is in it, which is the whole point and also the whole problem.
The second is what the years in between did to that. Put the years in one at a time and the page runs them in order: +50, −50, +30, +20, +10 on the same 10,000.00 ends at 12,870.00. The average of those five years is 12.00%, the money compounded at 5.18% a year, and the 6.82 points between them is what the sequence cost. A flat 10% every year would have left you with 16,105.10.
Everything here is arithmetic from the numbers you typed. No price feed, no brokerage connection, no history import — which is also its limit: it cannot tell you whether the values you entered were ever real.
Compound growth rate calculator — the same page under the other name
Compound growth rate calculator, compound annual growth rate calculator, CAGR calculator: three ways of asking for one thing, and this is that page. The arithmetic underneath all three is a single line — the ending value over the starting value, raised to one over the length, minus one — which is written out four ways, with the Excel line for each, on the CAGR formula page. What this page adds on top of that line is the second pane: the years taken one at a time instead of smoothed into a single rate.
Cumulative growth: the total, not the rate
Cumulative growth is the other half of the same pair, and it is already on this page as the row called Total over the whole period: 50.00% on the defaults, from 10,000.00 to 15,000.00. It is one subtraction — the ending value over the starting value, minus one — and it does not care how long the period ran. That is exactly why it should never be quoted on its own. 50.00% over five years and 50.00% over twenty are the same cumulative figure and two different rates: 8.45% and 2.05%.
The arithmetic behind it
The first pane is one line. The second runs the years in the order given, because the order is the only thing that matters once the returns are not all the same:
The gap is the interesting one, and it is not a rounding artefact. The average adds the years and divides; the compound rate multiplies them and takes a root. Multiplication does not care about order and addition does not either, but the two are not the same operation, and the second one is the one your money went through.
Worked example you can check by hand
Ten thousand growing to fifteen thousand over five years, then the five years that actually happened:
| Line | Arithmetic | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Length | 5 years + 0 months | 5.0000 |
| Multiple | 15,000.00 ÷ 10,000.00 | 1.5000× |
| Total growth | 1.5000 − 1 | 50.00% |
| Money gained | 15,000.00 − 10,000.00 | 5,000.00 |
| CAGR | 1.5000 ^ (1 ÷ 5) − 1 | 8.45% |
The last line is the one to keep. 1.5 to the power of one fifth is 1.0844718, so 8.4472%, which the page rounds to 8.45%.
| Year | Return | Value at the end of it | Arithmetic |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | +50.00% | 15,000.00 | 10,000.00 × 1.50 |
| 2 | −50.00% | 7,500.00 | 15,000.00 × 0.50 |
| 3 | +30.00% | 9,750.00 | 7,500.00 × 1.30 |
| 4 | +20.00% | 11,700.00 | 9,750.00 × 1.20 |
| 5 | +10.00% | 12,870.00 | 11,700.00 × 1.10 |
| Totals | +60.00 | 12,870.00 | 1.5 × 0.5 × 1.3 × 1.2 × 1.1 = 1.287 |
Average of the five years: 60 ÷ 5 = 12.00%. Rate the money compounded at: 1.287 to the power of one fifth is 1.0517579, so 5.18%. The gap is 6.82 points, and the value those years produced is 2,130.00 short of the 15,000.00 in the first pane — which is what happens when the two panes disagree.
The average is always the higher of the two
Two years will show it with no arithmetic worth the name: +50% then −50% on 10,000.00. The average is 0.00%. The money went to 15,000.00 and then to 7,500.00, which is the square root of 0.75 — 0.8660254 — so the rate is −13.40%. You averaged nothing and ended down a sixth of the account.
| Years | Average of them | Rate the money compounded at | Gap, points | Ending value |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10, 10, 10, 10, 10 | 10.00% | 10.00% | 0.00 | 16,105.10 |
| 25, 5, 15, −5, 10 | 10.00% | 9.54% | 0.46 | 15,772.97 |
| 50, −50, 30, 20, 10 | 12.00% | 5.18% | 6.82 | 12,870.00 |
| 100, −50, 100, −50, 10 | 22.00% | 1.92% | 20.08 | 11,000.00 |
All four rows have five years. The first two have the same 10.00% average and different outcomes, and the last one has a 22.00% average against 1.92% of actual compounding. The wider the years swing, the less the average tells you — which is why a headline average return and the balance in the account so often disagree.
A period shorter than a year
The rate is quoted per year, so a short period gets stretched to a year before it is quoted. The same 10,000.00 going to 11,000.00 — one move, 10% — reads as four very different numbers depending on how long it took:
| Length | CAGR | Arithmetic |
|---|---|---|
| 12 months | 10.00% | 1.10 ^ 1 − 1 |
| 6 months | 21.00% | 1.10 ^ 2 − 1 |
| 3 months | 46.41% | 1.10 ^ 4 − 1 |
| 1 month | 213.84% | 1.10 ^ 12 − 1 |
Nothing new happened to the money in any of those rows. The number is an annualisation, not a record, and the shorter the window the more of it is projection. Read it as "this is what that move would be worth if it repeated twelve times", because that is literally what the arithmetic did.
Where this one stops
- No deposits and no withdrawals. The rate assumes one sum went in and nothing was added or taken out. Add money in year three and the rate no longer describes your return at all — that figure needs the money-weighted return, and this page does not do it.
- Nothing about the path. A smooth 8.45% every year and a year that halved the account both produce the same rate if they land on the same endpoint. Two of the pages in front of this one say the same thing in their own words, and we are not claiming it as ours.
- No fees, no tax, no currency. The values are the ones you type. Whatever the broker took, whatever the jurisdiction charges and whatever the exchange rate did are not in the number.
- A year at −100% ends it. Once the value is zero nothing afterwards can bring it back, and the rate for that set of years is −100% no matter what follows.
- A negative ending value is not a rate. Below zero the root is not a real number, and the page leaves the field blank rather than printing something invented.
- No signal. This is arithmetic on your numbers, not a view on what anything does next.
On the ten pages we read for this word on 11 October 2026, and read again on 21 October where we could reach them, every input set we could see was a starting value, an ending value and a length of time: cagrcalculator.net asks for Starting Value, Ending Value and No. of Periods; Switch Markets asks for a starting value, an ending value and years, months and days; The Calculator Site adds start and end dates and a box for reversing the rate; Canva takes initial value, final value, duration and the rate; Omni takes number of periods, initial value and final value. None of them asked for the individual years, so none of them showed the gap between the average of those years and the rate the money compounded at. That is the one thing this page adds, and the claim stops there — those ten pages, that day.
Two of them are ahead of us elsewhere and this page does not pretend otherwise. The Calculator Site already says in words that a simple average disregards compounding and that CAGR is the geometric average — the idea is not new here, what is missing is the number for your own years. cagrcalculator.net runs a limitations section on volatility, and The Calculator Site says the same; this page says it too, in the list above, and claims nothing for it.
What this page does connect to is the rest of the site: the same smoothing question on a schedule of buys is the DCA calculator, compounding a balance at a fixed rate is the forex compounding calculator, and the drawdown a bad year leaves behind is the drawdown calculator.
Questions people ask
What does CAGR actually tell me?The single yearly rate that connects the starting value to the ending value over the length you gave. On this page's defaults that is 8.45% for 10,000.00 becoming 15,000.00 over five years. It says nothing about the years in between, and two very different paths can produce the same rate.
Why is the average of my years higher than my CAGR?Because the average adds the years and divides, while the money multiplied them. On the defaults here the average is 12.00% and the money compounded at 5.18%, a gap of 6.82 points. The wider your years swing, the wider that gap gets; it is only zero when every year was identical.
Can I use it for a period shorter than a year?You can, and the page will take months as well as years, but read the result as an annualisation rather than a record. The same 10% move reads as 10.00% over twelve months and 213.84% over one, because the arithmetic is repeating that move as many times as it fits in a year.
What if the value fell?The rate comes out negative, which is the honest answer. 10,000.00 down to 8,000.00 over three years is a CAGR of -7.17%. If the value reached zero the rate is -100%, and if you enter an ending value below zero the page leaves the field blank, because the root is not a real number.
Does it account for money I added along the way?No. The rate assumes one sum went in at the start and nothing moved in or out after that. If you added or withdrew mid-period, the rate on this page describes the two values and not your return, and the figure you want is the money-weighted return instead.
Is this the same as the compound interest rate?Not quite. A rate quoted by a bank or a broker is usually a nominal rate with a compounding frequency attached, and the effective yearly rate is higher than the nominal one. CAGR is the other direction: it starts from the two values you ended up with and works back to the yearly rate that joins them.
Why does it ask for the years one at a time?Because the order of the years is what sets the outcome, and a single average throws that order away. Two years of +50% and -50% average to nothing and leave you with 7,500.00 out of 10,000.00. Put them in the order they happened and the page runs them in that order.
Is a cumulative growth calculator the same thing?No. Cumulative growth is the total over the whole period, which is 50.00% here from 10,000.00 to 15,000.00, and it is the row this page prints as Total over the whole period. The rate is that same move spread across the length and quoted per year, which is 8.45% over five years. They sit one subtraction apart in the arithmetic and a long way apart in what they tell you: 50.00% over five years and 50.00% over twenty are the same cumulative figure and rates of 8.45% and 2.05%.
Does it fetch prices or connect to a brokerage?No, and there is nothing to connect to. No price is fetched, no API is called and nothing is uploaded or saved. The whole calculation runs in your browser from the entries you type.
Related guides
- CAGR formula — the same line rearranged three more ways, in days, weeks, months, quarters or years, with the Excel block for each.
- DCA calculator — the expected share ratio against buying once, and how many price paths leave the periodic buyer ahead.
- Forex compounding calculator — a balance carried forward at a fixed rate, and what a fixed lot does to it.
- Drawdown calculator — what a bad year takes out of the balance, and what the recovery asks for.
- Win rate calculator — the hit rate a payoff ratio needs before the sequence works.
- Profit factor calculator — what a journal of these trades adds up to across the whole run.
- Kelly criterion calculator — the fraction of the account a given edge is worth sizing to.
- Forex, stock and crypto position size calculator