ROI Calculator
Return on investment is the plainest way to score any outlay: what came back, relative to what went in. Enter the amount invested and the total received back; add the holding period in years to get the annualized rate that makes a three-year return comparable with a one-year one.
Return on investment
Example: invest 10,000, receive 12,000 back — a 20% ROI.
How ROI is computed
ROI% = (total received − amount invested) ÷ amount invested × 100. The example — 10,000 in, 12,000 back — nets 2,000 and scores 20%, figures computed at build time by the identical engine behind the form. Note the denominator: ROI measures against what you put in, which is what separates it from a profit margin (measured against revenue).
ROI's blind spot is time
A 20% return sounds the same whether it took one year or ten, and that silence is where comparisons go wrong. Supplying the years field annualizes the return geometrically: 20% over three years works out to 6.27% per year, not 6.67% — dividing by the year count overstates the rate because it ignores compounding. For growth measured between a start and end value (a portfolio, revenue, a user count), the CAGR calculator is the same mathematics approached from the other end.
Frequently asked questions
What goes in the "total received back" field?
The whole amount that came back to you — sale proceeds plus any payouts along the way — not just the profit. Put in 10,000 and get back 12,000, and the ROI is 20%. Entering the 2,000 profit there instead would wrongly report a large loss, because the calculator would read it as "spent 10,000, got 2,000 back".
What does a negative ROI mean?
You got back less than you put in. The scale runs down to −100%, which means nothing came back at all. Anything between 0 and −100 quantifies a partial loss: −25% says a quarter of the outlay was not recovered.
What is the difference between ROI and annualized ROI?
Plain ROI ignores time: 20% over three years and 20% over one year look identical. The annualized figure spreads the growth geometrically across the years — the same 20% total return is 6.27% per year over three years — so returns held for different spans can be compared honestly.
How is ROI different from CAGR?
They are two framings of the same growth. ROI starts from money out and money in; CAGR starts from a value at two dates and always expresses a yearly rate. Annualizing an ROI gives exactly the CAGR of the invested amount growing into the total received.
Should costs like fees be included?
Fold every cost of making the investment — purchase price, fees, improvements — into the invested-amount field, and every inflow into the received field. ROI is only as honest as its inputs; leaving costs out is the most common way the number flatters.
Amounts are processed locally and never transmitted. This is an arithmetic tool, not investment advice — it reports the rate your numbers imply, nothing more. Implementation details are on the methodology page.