Enter what you paid, what it was worth at the end and the dates you held it. We’ll count the exact days and turn your result into a yearly rate.
Two steps. First, figure out exactly how long you held it. Then find the steady yearly rate over that stretch:
Why 365.25? Leap years. Every fourth year has an extra day, so the average year is a quarter-day longer than 365.
Because real investments don’t line up with neat whole years. If you bought in mid-March 2022 and sold at the end of September 2025, was that 3.5 years? Close, but not quite.
Using the actual dates takes the guessing out. Otherwise, the math is exactly the same as CAGR.
You bought for $10,000 on March 15, 2022, and it was worth $13,500 on September 30, 2025.
A 35% gain over 3 years, 6 months and 15 days is the same as earning 8.83% a year.
$5,000 grows to $5,400 in 120 days. That’s a solid 8% gain.
Annualizing assumes you could repeat that four-month run three times in a row, which turns 8% into 26.4%. That’s why, for anything under a year, the total return is usually the more honest number. The calculator warns you when this applies.
Same formula, different starting point. People usually say “annualized return” when they have actual buy and sell dates, and “CAGR” when they’re working with a number of years. This page uses dates; the CAGR calculator uses years or months.
You can, but take it with a grain of salt. It assumes the same pace keeps going for a full year, and that rarely happens. That’s why many professional reporting standards don’t annualize returns for periods under a year.
If you want your total return, yes. Add any dividends or interest you received to the ending value. Leave them out and you’re measuring the price change only.
This calculator is built for one purchase and one ending value. If you bought or sold in pieces, look for a money-weighted return like XIRR, which accounts for when each dollar went in or came out.
It’s the average length of a year once you count leap years. Some tools use 365. Over a few years, the difference in the answer is tiny.