CAGR Calculator

A fund brags it doubled in seven years; a stock gained 40% in three; your property rose 80% in twelve. Which grew fastest? Raw percentages over different periods cannot be compared, and this confusion is where investment marketing lives. The honest comparison is CAGR, the compound annual growth rate: the single steady yearly rate that would turn the start value into the end value over the period. It reduces every growth story to one comparable number.

Enter start, end and years; read the CAGR, the total change, and the doubling time by the rule of 72. The doubling in seven years works out to 10.4% a year; the 40% in three to 11.9%; the 80% in twelve to 5%. Suddenly the stories rank themselves, which is precisely why the sellers of the slowest one never quote it this way.

How to use

1. Enter the value at the start of the period.
2. Enter the value at the end, with dividends or rent reinvested included if you want total return.
3. Enter the years between, fractions included: 2.5 years works.
4. Read the CAGR, the total change and the doubling time.
5. Compare investments by running each through; the CAGR column is the ranking.
6. Check any claimed return the same way: advertised growth over a stated period, reduced to the honest yearly rate.

Why use our cagr calculator?

CAGR's virtue is that it cannot be gamed by period selection: 'up 300%' means nothing until the years are known, and CAGR forces the years into the number. Its limitation is stated just as plainly by this page: it smooths the path. An investment that crawled sideways for nine years and tripled in the tenth shares a CAGR with one that climbed steadily, and only one of them was holdable by an actual human. CAGR describes endpoints; volatility describes the journey; both matter and neither substitutes for the other.

The rule-of-72 line makes rates tangible: at 10% money doubles roughly every 7.2 years, at 5% every 14.4, and feeling that difference in years does more for decision-making than the percentages themselves. The calculator pairs with the compound interest calculator for projecting forward at a chosen rate, the inflation calculator for converting nominal CAGR into real, and the FIRE calculator where the assumed growth rate becomes a retirement date.

CAGR also quietly reframes fees and taxes: a fund returning 9% gross with 1.5% yearly costs is a 7.5% CAGR machine, and over twenty years that gap compounds into a third of the final pot. Running the calculator on gross and net endpoints makes fee drag visceral in a way percentage points never manage, which is worth an afternoon of anyone's time before choosing where decades of savings live.

CAGR smooths a bumpy return into one clean rate, which is useful for comparison and misleading if you forget the bumps. The SEC's compound interest calculator is a good sanity check on any growth figure you are quoted.

Who is this tool for?

Fund fact-checking is the classic: marketing quotes cumulative growth over a flattering period, the calculator reduces it to CAGR, and the comparison against a boring index fund becomes possible. Property owners annualize a decade of appreciation and, often for the first time, compare it against what equities did over the same years, an exercise with famously humbling results in either direction.

Business owners compute revenue CAGR across years for pitches and planning, where 'we grew 15% a year for four years' beats four disconnected percentages. Salary earners annualize a career: the raise from 40,000 to 65,000 over eight years is a 6.3% CAGR, a number worth knowing against inflation's. And skeptics of any 'we turned X into Y' story have, in three fields, the instrument that deflates it to a rate.

Frequently asked questions