ROI Calculator

Measure the absolute and annualised return on any investment.

Amount Invested

₹

Current Or Final Value

₹

Holding Period

Use decimals for part-years — 0.25 is three months.

Gain / Loss

₹45,000

Absolute ROI

45%

Annualised (CAGR)

7.71%

Money Multiple

1.45x

Annualised Return (CAGR)

7.71%

Invested

Gain

What Is an ROI Calculator?

An ROI, or return on investment, calculator tells you how much profit or loss an investment has generated, as a percentage of what you originally put in. You enter the amount invested and the current or final value, and it calculates the gain or loss and the percentage return.

The ROI Formula

ROI (%) = [(Current value − Cost of investment) ÷ Cost of investment] × 100

This is a simple, point-to-point calculation. It does not account for how long you held the investment, which is the key thing that separates it from CAGR or XIRR.

Worked Example

You bought shares worth ₹1,00,000 and they are now worth ₹1,45,000.

ROI = [(1,45,000 − 1,00,000) ÷ 1,00,000] × 100 = 45%

This tells you the total return over the entire holding period, but not whether that happened in 6 months or 6 years, which matters a great deal for judging whether it is actually a good return.

ROI vs CAGR vs XIRR

Metric	What it measures	Accounts for time?	Best used for
ROI	Total percentage gain or loss	No	Quick, single-period comparisons
CAGR	Annualised growth rate for a lumpsum	Yes	Comparing lumpsum investments across different holding periods
XIRR	Annualised return for irregular cash flows	Yes	SIPs, partial withdrawals, multiple transaction dates

A 45% ROI over 6 months is an outstanding result. The same 45% ROI over 6 years is a fairly ordinary one, closer to about 6.4% annualised. This is exactly why ROI alone can be misleading when comparing investments held for different lengths of time.

The Under-a-Year Rule

SEBI’s mutual fund disclosure convention is to quote absolute return for periods under a year and CAGR only for a year or more. There is a good reason: annualising a three-month 20% gain turns it into 107%, which is not a number anyone should act on. This calculator follows that rule and tells you which figure to quote.

Key Takeaways

ROI measures your total percentage return on an investment, calculated as gain divided by original cost.
It does not account for the holding period, so the same ROI can represent very different annualised performance.
Use CAGR for lumpsum investments compared across different durations, and XIRR when there are multiple cash flows on different dates, such as SIPs.
ROI remains useful for quick, single-period comparisons, like assessing a completed trade or a one-time transaction.

FAQs

Not necessarily, since ROI ignores the time taken to achieve that return. A lower ROI achieved in a much shorter time can represent better annualised performance than a higher ROI over many years.