ROI calculator
Return on investment, net return, and annualised return, with the arithmetic shown so you can check every number. Free, nothing stored.
What you paid for it.
What you sold it for, or what it is worth now. Anything it paid you along the way goes in income received.
Fees, commission, shipping, setup. These add to your cost basis.
Dividends, interest, coupons, rent. These add to your return, never to your cost.
Changes the symbol on screen. No conversion happens.
Years, months or days. Under a year the annualised line is suppressed, and the calculator explains why.
Enter what you put in and what it is worth now. The answer appears as you type, with the arithmetic shown underneath. Or .
What the campaign cost you.
Revenue attributed to that spend.
Left at 100 the headline matches a plain revenue calculation. Enter your real margin to see the return on profit.
Changes the symbol on screen. No conversion happens.
Enter your spend and the revenue it brought back. You get ROAS as a ratio, marketing ROI as a percentage, and your break even ROAS. Or .
How to calculate return on investment
- Enter what you paid. The purchase price goes in initial cost, and anything else the investment cost you, fees, commission, shipping, setup, goes in additional costs. Together they are your cost basis, and ROI is measured against that, not against the purchase price alone.
- Enter what it is worth now. Use the sale price if you have sold it, or today's market value if you still hold it. If it paid you anything along the way, dividends, interest, coupons or rent, put that in income received: it adds to your return and never to your cost. The difference between everything you got back and your cost basis is your net return.
- Add the holding period if you have one, as a number in years, months or days, or as a pair of dates. Under a year you get the return for the period you held it, a note saying why it is not stretched into a yearly figure, and the number other calculators would have shown you instead. A year or more and the annualised return appears, which is the figure you can fairly compare against anything else.
The formulas, in plain terms
Four formulas cover almost every question people bring to a calculator like this. Each one is written out below with a worked example, so you can follow the arithmetic rather than trust a box.
Simple ROI
ROI = (net return / total cost) × 100
You put in 10,000 and paid 500 in fees, so your total cost is 10,500. It is now worth 14,200, so your net return is 14,200 minus 10,500, which is 3,700. ROI = (3,700 / 10,500) × 100 = 35.24%. Any income the investment paid you along the way, dividends, interest, coupons or rent, joins the top of that fraction and never the bottom, because it is money the investment returned rather than money you put in.
Annualised ROI
Annualised ROI = ((final value / total cost) ^ (1 / years) - 1) × 100
The same numbers held for 3 years: ((14,200 / 10,500) ^ (1 / 3) - 1) × 100 = 10.59% a year. This is the figure to compare against a savings rate or an index fund, because it puts every holding period on the same footing.
ROAS
ROAS = revenue / ad spend
50,000 of revenue on 15,000 of ad spend = 3.33x. Report it as a ratio, not a percentage. It answers one narrow question: how much revenue came back for every 1 you spent. It does not subtract the 1.
Marketing ROI
Marketing ROI = ((gross profit - ad spend) / ad spend) × 100
Using revenue in place of profit, that same campaign reads ((50,000 - 15,000) / 15,000) × 100 = 233.33%. At a 50% gross margin, 50,000 of revenue is only 25,000 of gross profit, so the honest figure is ((25,000 - 15,000) / 15,000) × 100 = 66.67%. Both are correct arithmetic on different inputs, which is why the calculator shows the margin adjusted line the moment you enter a margin.
One rule this calculator will not break: it never annualises a period shorter than a year. The CFA Institute's Global Investment Performance Standards, the GIPS standards, require that returns for periods of less than one year are not annualised. The reason is easy to see once you try it. A 30% gain over a single month, compounded out across twelve, reads as roughly 2,230% a year, a number that describes nothing that actually happened. Several calculators will hand you that figure anyway. Under a year, this one gives you the period return and a line explaining why it stopped there.
ROI and ROAS are not the same thing
They look alike and they answer different questions. ROAS divides revenue by ad spend and stops there, so the spend is never subtracted, and the answer is a ratio: 3.33x means 3.33 came back for every 1 that went out. ROI subtracts what you spent before dividing, so the answer is the share you gained on top of your money, written as a percentage. Mix them up and you will report a number several times larger than your actual return.
The confusion gets expensive once margin enters. A 4x ROAS sounds strong until you price in the cost of what you sold. At a 20% gross margin, 40,000 of revenue from 10,000 of ad spend is only 8,000 of gross profit, which is 2,000 less than the campaign cost. The campaign lost money at 4x. That is what break even ROAS shows: break even ROAS = 1 / gross margin, so at a 20% margin you need 5.00x just to get your money back, and at a 60% margin you need 1.67x.
This is also why the calculator gives you break even ROAS instead of a target to aim for. Your break even point is set by your own margin. It is arithmetic you can check, and it is different for every business.
Frequently asked questions
What is a good ROI?
There is no universal number, and anyone who gives you one is guessing on your behalf. A good ROI is one that beats what the same money would have earned in the next best place you could have put it, over the same period, at a risk you are willing to carry. Compare your figure against that alternative and you have a real answer. Compare it against a number from an article and you have nothing.
Why does this not annualise my 3 month return?
Because annualising a short period assumes the same run continues for the rest of the year, and nobody knows that. The CFA Institute's Global Investment Performance Standards require that returns for periods shorter than one year are not annualised, and I follow that here. Under a year you get the return for the period you actually held it, clearly labelled. Enter a year or more and the annualised line appears.
Should I use revenue or profit for marketing ROI?
Profit. Revenue counts money that was never yours to keep, because part of it pays for the thing you sold. Using revenue inflates the answer, sometimes badly. That is what the gross margin field is for: enter your real margin and the calculator shows the margin adjusted return underneath the headline, so you can see the size of the gap for yourself.
Why does another ROI calculator give a different answer for the same numbers?
Almost always because of where the additional costs land. Take 1,000 invested, 200 in fees, and a final value of 1,500. This calculator adds the 200 to your cost basis, so the sum is (1,500 - 1,200) / 1,200 × 100 = 25.00%. CalculatorSoup subtracts the 200 from the gain instead and leaves the denominator at your original 1,000, so its sum is (1,500 - 1,000 - 200) / 1,000 × 100 = 30.00%. Neither is a mistake. They are two conventions, and each one is consistent with itself. I use the cost-basis convention because the 200 was money you had to commit before any return could exist, which puts it on the invested side next to the purchase price, and because a denominator equal to everything you committed is what keeps the annualised figure comparable with other investments. If you need the other convention, leave additional costs blank and take them off your final value instead.
Does it store my numbers?
No. The maths runs in your browser, nothing is sent to a server, and nothing is saved. Refresh the page and it is gone. Use the copy button if you want to keep a result.
Can I use any currency?
You can pick from the four in the list, and the choice only changes the symbol on screen. No conversion happens, so whatever currency you type in is the currency you get out. The percentages come out the same in any currency anyway.