CAGR Calculator (Compound Annual Growth Rate)

Calculate the Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) from a beginning value, ending value, and number of years. Also project a future value from a target CAGR, or solve for the years needed to reach it.

What is CAGR (Compound Annual Growth Rate)?

CAGR (Compound Annual Growth Rate) is a metric that works backward from real-world results — a beginning value, an ending value, and the number of years between them — to estimate the constant annual rate that would have produced the same outcome if growth had compounded evenly every year. Real investments rise and fall unevenly from year to year, but CAGR smooths that volatility into a single figure, which makes it much easier to compare performance fairly across different time periods and different assets.

This tool offers three switchable modes: (1) calculate CAGR from a beginning value, an ending value, and the number of years, (2) project the ending value you could reach from a beginning value, a target CAGR, and a number of years, and (3) solve for how many years it would take to go from a beginning value to a target ending value at a given target CAGR. Use it to evaluate past investment performance as well as to set realistic wealth-building goals.

How to use the CAGR calculator

Choose a calculation mode Pick "Calculate CAGR", "Project ending value", or "Solve for years" depending on which figure you want to find
Enter the beginning value This is the starting point of your comparison — for example, the value of an investment when you first purchased it
Fill in the remaining fields for your mode Depending on the mode, enter the ending value, number of years, and/or target CAGR shown on screen
Review the result and year-by-year projection The tool automatically displays the estimated value for each year if it grew at a constant CAGR

Tips for getting more out of it

CAGR only uses the beginning and ending values, so it ignores any crashes or spikes that happened in between. If you want to account for what happened along the way, check the year-by-year returns as well.
CAGR does not directly apply to recurring contributions, like monthly investing plans. If you want the effective return on a series of regular contributions, use our savings/contribution calculator instead.
The projected ending value shown in "Project ending value" mode is a theoretical figure assuming constant growth at your target CAGR — actual market returns will vary.
When comparing CAGR across multiple investments, make sure you are using the same time period and the same currency, or the comparison will not be meaningful.

Use cases

Compare fund or stock performance

Convert returns from investments held over different time periods into a common CAGR figure so you can compare them fairly

Back out a business growth rate

Work backward from past revenue or user-count figures to state growth as "an X% CAGR over the last N years" for a pitch deck or report

Set a realistic savings or investment goal

Use the "Project ending value" mode with a target CAGR to see whether your growth assumptions are realistic before committing to a plan

Pair with compound interest or investment calculators

Combine this tool with our investment growth calculator or compound interest calculator to model both lump-sum and recurring-contribution scenarios

Glossary

CAGR (Compound Annual Growth Rate): An annualized growth rate derived from a beginning and ending value, assuming the value compounded at a constant rate every year in between. Because it smooths out year-to-year swings into one number, it is widely used to compare performance across different periods and assets.
Geometric mean: An average calculated by multiplying a series of growth factors together and taking the root corresponding to the number of periods. CAGR is a form of geometric mean applied over a number of years, and differs from the "arithmetic mean" you get by simply averaging each year's return.
Cumulative (total) growth: The overall percentage increase or decrease in value from the beginning to the end of a period. Where CAGR expresses growth "per year," cumulative growth expresses it "over the whole period."
Beginning value / ending value: The value at the start of the period you are measuring is the beginning value, and the value at the end (or at the point of sale, for an investment) is the ending value.

Frequently asked questions

A simple average just adds up each year's percentage return and divides by the number of years (an "arithmetic mean"), while CAGR accounts for compounding (a "geometric mean"). The more a value swings up and down from year to year, the higher the simple average tends to look compared to CAGR — and CAGR is the one that actually reflects how the money grew.

Yes. If the ending value is lower than the beginning value, CAGR will be negative. This represents the constant annual rate at which the value would have had to shrink, on average, to reach that lower ending value.

Some combinations of inputs are mathematically impossible to solve — for example, a target CAGR of 0%, or a positive target CAGR paired with an ending value that is lower than the beginning value. Try adjusting your inputs.

No. CAGR is calculated from past results (or a hypothetical target you enter) and does not guarantee or predict future performance. Treat it as one reference point among several when making investment decisions.

Side Note — Why the investing world loves CAGR

Open almost any mutual fund prospectus or asset manager's marketing brochure and you will see performance quoted as an "annualized return" or "CAGR." That is because volatile assets like stocks and funds need to be expressed in a way that is comparable to something familiar, like the annual interest rate on a savings account. Looking at a single year's return in isolation can be misleading, since it might just reflect an unusually good or bad year. CAGR instead smooths the entire holding period into one number, making it much easier to judge the "true" performance of a multi-year investment.

One counterintuitive property of CAGR is that it is always lower than (or equal to) the simple average of the same yearly returns. Consider an investment that goes up 50% in year one and then down 50% in year two: the simple average looks like a flat 0%, but $1,000,000 that grows to $1,500,000 and then falls back to $750,000 has actually lost value — so the two-year CAGR is negative. The more volatile the returns, the wider this gap between the simple average and CAGR becomes. This effect is known as "volatility drag," and it is a staple teaching example in investing education for showing why riskier assets often deliver a real-world compounded return that looks worse than their headline average return suggests.

Corporate earnings reports lean on the same idea. A company will often describe its growth as "a 12% CAGR over the past five years" rather than listing five separate annual growth figures, because a single compounded rate is far easier for investors to digest — even when the actual year-to-year growth was uneven. That dual use, in both personal investing and corporate reporting, is part of why CAGR has become one of the most practical and widely recognized growth metrics in finance.

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