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ROI calculator

Work out return on investment gross and net of costs, with the annualised rate beside it, so two investments of different lengths can actually be compared.

Inputs
Currency
What you originally put in, before any fees.
What the investment is worth now, or what you sold it for.
Brokerage, maintenance, tax on the gain. Most ROI calculators give you nowhere to put these, so their answer is always the gross one.
ROI itself ignores time. This is what turns it into a comparable annual rate.
Result
ROI after costs
28.57%
ROI before costs
35%
What the costs took off
6.43%
Annualised, after costs
8.74%
Annualised, before costs
10.52%
Net gain
$3,000
Gain before costs
$3,500
Total put in, including costs
$10,500

Key takeaways

  • ROI is (gain minus cost) divided by cost, so $10,000 becoming $13,500 is 35 percent.
  • Costs change the answer materially: $500 of fees on that trade cuts ROI from 35 percent to 28.57 percent.
  • ROI contains no timeframe, so a 100 percent return reads identically over three years and over ten.
  • Annualising fixes that: the same doubling is 25.99 percent a year over three years and 7.18 percent over ten.
  • ROI carries no information about risk, so two identical figures can describe very different decisions.

How the ROI calculator works

Return on investment is the gain an investment produced measured against what it cost, written as a percentage. Put in what you invested, what came back, what it cost you along the way, and how long you held it, and this returns the ratio both before and after those costs.

Most ROI calculators ask for two numbers and a period. This one asks for three, and the third changes the answer more than people expect.

The formula

ROI = (gain from investment minus cost of investment) / cost of investment

Written the way Groww puts it, ((final value minus initial investment) / initial investment) x 100. Omni writes the same thing as (G - C) / C. Three different pages, one ratio.

The arithmetic is trivial. What isn't trivial is deciding which numbers go in it.

Nobody agrees what "cost" means

calculator.net names the problem outright: investors define cost and gain differently, depending on whether taxes, expenses and interim cash flows are counted. Two honest people can report very different ROIs on the same trade.

Groww goes as far as saying fees, taxes and transaction costs reduce the actual return, then offers nowhere to enter any of them. So the figure it hands back is always the gross one, and the reader is left to adjust it in their head.

Here's what that omission is worth on a small trade:

GrossAfter costs
Invested$10,000$10,000
Fees and taxnot counted$500
Returned$13,500$13,500
Gain$3,500$3,000
Base it's measured against$10,000$10,500
ROI35%28.57%

Six and a half percentage points, on $500. The costs hit twice: they shrink the gain and they enlarge the base, because money spent on fees is money the investment required of you.

ROI has no clock in it

The metric's other weakness is structural, and calculator.net calls it the biggest nuance with ROI: there's no timeframe involved. Doubling your money is 100% ROI whether it took three years or ten.

Annualising fixes it by spreading the total across the years:

Annualised ROI = (1 + ROI)^(1/years) - 1

Doubling your money overROIAnnualised
3 years100%25.99%
5 years100%14.87%
10 years100%7.18%

Same headline, three completely different investments. That conversion is identical to the CAGR calculation, so on a single amount in and a single amount out, annualised ROI and CAGR are the same number.

A worked case

$10,000 into a holding sold three years later for $13,500, with $500 of brokerage and tax along the way.

The gross ROI is 35%, which is the figure every ranked calculator returns. After costs it's 28.57%. Annualised, the honest number is 8.74% a year, against the 10.52% a gross-only tool would imply. The gap between the number you'd quote at a dinner party and the number that describes what happened is nearly two percentage points a year.

What ROI can't tell you

Risk, most of all. A 12% ROI on a government bond and a 12% ROI on one speculative stock are the same number describing decisions that aren't remotely comparable, and nothing in the formula separates them.

It also can't handle money moving more than twice. ROI takes one amount in and one amount out. If you added to a position, took partial profits, or received dividends along the way, the ratio can't represent that faithfully and IRR or XIRR is the measure that can.

Nor does it say anything about opportunity cost. The capital was tied up for the whole period and could have been elsewhere, which is a comparison ROI simply doesn't make.

Results here are arithmetic on the numbers you entered, not financial advice. For decisions about your own money, speak to a licensed financial adviser. To annualise from a start and end value instead, use the CAGR calculator; to judge how long capital stays exposed, the payback period calculator answers that directly.

Frequently asked questions

What is the ROI formula? ROI = (gain from investment minus cost of investment) divided by cost of investment, usually shown as a percentage. Putting in $10,000 and getting back $13,500 is a $3,500 gain on a $10,000 cost, so 35 percent.

How do I calculate ROI after fees and taxes? Add the costs to what the investment required of you, then divide the remaining gain by that larger figure. On the same $10,000 to $13,500 trade with $500 of fees and tax, the gain falls to $3,000 and the base rises to $10,500, so ROI drops from 35 percent to 28.57 percent. That 6.43 point difference is the part almost every ROI calculator leaves out, because they give you nowhere to enter costs at all.

What counts as the cost of an investment? There is no single answer, and that is the metric's biggest weakness after its blindness to time. Some people count only the purchase price, others add brokerage, ongoing charges, and tax on the gain. Two honest people can report very different ROIs on the same trade. This tool shows the gross and net figures side by side so the choice is visible rather than buried.

What is annualised ROI and why does it matter? Annualised ROI spreads the total return across the years using (1 plus ROI) raised to the power of one over the years, minus one. It matters because plain ROI has no timeframe in it, so doubling your money reads as 100 percent whether it took three years or ten. Annualised, those are 25.99 percent and 7.18 percent a year, which are not remotely the same investment.

What is the difference between ROI and CAGR? ROI is the total ratio over the whole holding period and ignores time. CAGR is the steady annual rate that would produce that same result. The annualised ROI shown here is calculated the same way CAGR is, so on a single lump sum in and a single amount out, annualised ROI and CAGR are the same number.

What is the difference between ROI and IRR? ROI handles one amount in and one amount out. IRR handles a whole series of cash flows arriving at different times, and finds the rate that makes their net present value zero. If money went in or came out more than once, ROI cannot represent it properly and IRR or XIRR is the right tool.

What does ROI not tell you? Risk, above all. A 12 percent ROI on a government bond and a 12 percent ROI on a single speculative stock are the same number describing very different decisions, and nothing in the formula distinguishes them. It also says nothing about how much capital was tied up or what else you could have done with it.

Can ROI be negative? Yes. If the investment returns less than it cost, the gain is negative and so is the ROI. Getting $7,000 back from $10,000 is a negative 30 percent ROI, which annualised over two years is about negative 16.33 percent a year.

Sources

Built and reviewed by DexTechLabs against the primary sources cited above. Last reviewed 2026-07-19. How we build and verify tools.

Mutual fund returns are market-linked and not guaranteed, so this is an estimate, not investment advice. Consult a SEBI-registered adviser before acting on it.