Compound Annual Growth Rate — back-solve the annualised return or project a future value at a known rate.
Updated
Educational only — not financial or tax advice. Talk to a qualified advisor before making decisions with real money.
Quick start
Enter the starting value, the ending value and the number of years to get the constant annual growth rate that would carry the investment from start to end.
'Calculate CAGR' to back-solve the rate from initial + final + years. 'Project future value' to forecast forward from a known CAGR.
All in the same currency. Years can be fractional (e.g. 3.5 for 3 years 6 months). Default currency is Indian Rupees — switch to USD / EUR / GBP from the picker.
CAGR, total return, multiplier and doubling time (rule of 72). For projections, the year-by-year table shows the compounding curve.
In-depth guide
Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) is the single number that lets you compare any two investments held for different periods. It's the geometric mean annual growth that would smooth a bumpy real-world return into a constant rate. Equity funds, stocks, real estate, gold, business revenue — all of them get apples-to-apples with CAGR.
CAGR = (final / initial)^(1 / years) − 1
Example. You invested ₹1L in 2020 and it's now ₹2.5L in 2025 (5 years). CAGR = (2.5)^(1/5) − 1 = 0.20114 = 20.11% per year. Even though the actual yearly returns were probably +35%, −10%, +25%, +30%, +5% (averaging 17%), the geometric CAGR is 20.11% because compounding lifts the geometric mean above the arithmetic mean whenever returns vary.
Project forward by inverting: future = initial · (1 + CAGR)^years.
Absolute return = (final − initial) / initial. Useless for comparing different time horizons — a 50% gain in 2 years beats a 60% gain in 5 years.
CAGR = constant annualised rate. Works when there are no cashflows in or out between the start and end dates. Perfect for lumpsum investments, FDs, real-estate appreciation, gold purchases.
XIRR = internal rate of return with arbitrary cashflows. Required for SIPs, top-up investments, partial withdrawals — basically any pattern where money enters or leaves mid-way. Use Excel / Google Sheets' XIRR() function for those.
A 12% nominal CAGR over a decade isn't 12% in purchasing-power terms. Inflation eats a chunk; capital-gains tax eats another.
Real CAGR ≈ nominal CAGR − inflation rate. At 12% nominal and 6% inflation, your real growth is ~6% — your money buys roughly 6% more after 1 year, not 12%.
Post-tax CAGR. For Indian equity funds held > 1 year, LTCG above ₹1.25L (FY 2025-26) is taxed at 12.5%. Debt funds bought after Apr 2023 are taxed at slab rates. Always apply the right tax slab to the gain before computing real return for goal-planning purposes.
Rule of 72: years to double ≈ 72 / CAGR%. At 12% your money doubles in 6 years; at 8% in 9 years.
Rule of 114: years to triple ≈ 114 / CAGR%. At 12% your money triples in ~9.5 years.
Rule of 144: years to quadruple ≈ 144 / CAGR%. At 12% your money 4x's in 12 years.
These are accurate to within ~5% in the 6–12% range that covers most real-world fixed-income and equity returns. Use them to sanity-check rosier projections — if a scheme claims to double in 3 years, it's implying ~26% CAGR, which is heroic for any non-trivial corpus.
Educational only — not financial advice.
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CAGR = (final / initial)^(1 / years) − 1. Example: ₹1L grows to ₹2.5L over 5 years → CAGR = (2.5)^(1/5) − 1 = 20.11% per year. It's the geometric mean annual growth that smooths actual year-by-year volatility into a single 'as if' constant rate.
Use CAGR to compare investments held for different periods, because absolute returns mislead when horizons differ. A 50% absolute return over 2 years (≈22.5% CAGR) beats a 60% return over 5 years (≈9.86% CAGR). Use absolute return only when comparing same-period outcomes.
No. CAGR uses only the starting and ending value plus the period. If you added or withdrew money mid-way, you need XIRR (Excel / Sheets) or money-weighted return — they handle uneven cashflows. SIP investors should use XIRR, not CAGR.
Rough Indian long-run averages (educational, not advice): equity mutual funds 12–14%, Nifty 50 ~11–12%, bank FDs 6–7%, real estate 5–8% (highly location-dependent), gold 8–9%. Always check post-tax, post-inflation real CAGR for the meaningful comparison.
Years to double ≈ 72 / CAGR%. At 12% CAGR your money doubles in ~6 years; at 8% in ~9 years; at 6% in ~12 years. Useful sanity check — if you can't double in your planning horizon at the assumed rate, the assumption is too optimistic.
CAGR is undefined when initial or final is zero or negative, because (negative/positive)^(1/n) involves complex numbers. If you actually lost more than 100%, CAGR isn't the right metric — quote the total loss as a percentage instead.
Yes. CAGR works on anything that grows non-negatively: company revenue, monthly active users, GDP, salary, subscriber count. The formula doesn't care what the value represents — it just asks 'what constant rate gets from A to B in N periods?'
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