ROI Calculator
Calculate the return on investment of any spend.
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The ROI Calculator measures how much an investment earned or lost relative to what you put in. Enter the amount invested and the total amount you got back, and it returns the return on investment as a percentage together with the net gain in money, which is negative when you lost money.
The ROI formula and an example
ROI = (Return − Investment) ÷ Investment × 100
You bought shares for ₹1,00,000 and sold them for ₹1,25,000. The net gain is ₹25,000 and the ROI is 25,000 ÷ 1,00,000 × 100 = 25%. If instead a ₹20,000 stall at a trade fair brought back only ₹15,000 in profit, the calculator shows −25% and a net gain of −5,000.00.
Return means the full amount you got back
The Return field expects the total value at the end, not just the profit. Entering the ₹25,000 profit from the share example as the return, against ₹1,00,000 invested, gives −75%, which is obviously wrong. If you only know the profit, add it to the investment first: 1,00,000 + 25,000 = 1,25,000.
ROI ignores time, so annualise before comparing
A 25% gain over two years is not the same as 25% in one year. To compare investments that ran for different periods, convert ROI to a yearly compounded rate:
Annual rate = (1 + ROI ÷ 100)^(1 ÷ years) − 1, where ^ means “to the power of”.
| Total ROI | Period | Per year |
|---|---|---|
| 25% | 2 years | 11.80% |
| 60% | 3 years | 16.96% |
The annual figure is what you should hold up against a fixed deposit rate or a fund's yearly return. For money invested in monthly instalments, a single ROI figure is misleading because each instalment was invested for a different length of time; the SIP calculator models that case properly. To project a one-time investment forward at an expected yearly return, use the Lumpsum Calculator.
Marketing ROI: use profit, not revenue
A common shortcut is to enter ad spend as the investment and the sales it produced as the return. Say ₹50,000 of ads brought in ₹80,000 in sales: the calculator shows 60%. That figure is really a revenue ratio (often called ROAS, here 1.6x), not a return. If the products you sold cost you 60% of their price, the campaign produced only ₹32,000 of gross profit. Entering 50,000 and 32,000 shows the true picture: an ROI of −36%.
Costs worth including
- Brokerage, taxes and fees on buying and selling.
- Agency or freelancer charges on top of the ad budget itself.
- Your own time, if the project took hours that could have earned something else.
Leaving these out inflates ROI. Treat the result as a planning estimate rather than financial advice.