Growth Rate Calculator
Growth rate sounds like one number, but it is really three different questions: how much did it change in total, what steady yearly rate would compound the start into the end, and what was the average of the actual yearly rates? Each answer suits a different job, and mixing them up is one of the most common mistakes in investing and business analysis.
The Growth Rate Calculator below answers all three. Pick total growth, CAGR, or AAGR mode, enter your numbers, and get the result with a full breakdown. CAGR mode also shows the doubling time at your rate, and AAGR mode prints the year-by-year table the average came from.
Quick Answer
Key takeaways
- Total growth answers how much changed over the whole period. It ignores how long the period was.
- CAGR answers what steady yearly rate compounds the start into the end. It is the right measure for comparing investments held for different lengths of time.
- AAGR answers what the average yearly rate was. It shows the pattern of growth, and it runs a little higher than CAGR whenever growth is uneven.
- None of the three includes dividends, deposits, or withdrawals. Add reinvested income to the ending value first if you want a total-return figure.
Which growth rate do you actually need?
The right mode depends on the question you are asking, not on the numbers you happen to have. Use this short flow before you calculate, because quoting a total growth figure where an annualized rate belongs is how a 50% five-year gain gets misreported as 50% a year.
If you only need a plain total percent change between two numbers, with no modes and no annualizing, our percent growth calculator is the narrower tool built for exactly that. The two pages are kept separate on purpose: percent growth answers the single total-change question, while this page exists for the annualized and year-by-year questions. When a result here will be compared against a quoted investment return, our CAGR return calculator frames the same compound rate as an investment return, and our change percent calculator covers one-step percentage changes in prices and quantities.
The three formulas this tool runs
Each mode runs one formula, and the result label always names the mode that produced the number. The formulas below are written exactly as the code computes them.
CAGR = ((Ending Value / Beginning Value)(1 / Years) – 1) x 100
AAGR = (Year 1 rate + Year 2 rate + … ) / Number of years, where each year’s rate is ((This year – Last year) / Last year) x 100
Both starting and ending values must be positive numbers in Total and CAGR modes, or the tool asks you to enter valid values instead of guessing. That has one consequence worth knowing: a fall to exactly zero cannot be entered, because the ending value must be above zero. AAGR mode is stricter in a different way: every value in the pasted series must be positive, you need at least two of them, and a line that is not a number is reported by its line number so you can fix the paste.
| Measure | Question it answers | Inputs needed | Same data, three answers |
|---|---|---|---|
| Total growth | How much did it change overall? | Start and end values | $10,000 to $20,000 = 100.00% |
| CAGR | What steady yearly rate compounds start into end? | Start, end, and years | $10,000 to $20,000 over 5 years = 14.87% per year |
| AAGR | What was the average of the yearly rates? | Every year’s value | Rates of 20%, 25%, 10% average to 18.33% per year |
Worked examples, one per mode
Every example on this page reproduces exactly in the calculator above, which is why the tool opens pre-filled with the first one. Run them in order and you will see all three result labels.
Total mode. You invested $10,000 and it is now worth $15,000. The tool computes ((15,000 – 10,000) / 10,000) x 100 and displays 50.00%. If the value fell instead, from $10,000 to $8,000, the same steps give -20.00%. A negative result means the value shrank; if nothing changed, the result is 0.00%.
CAGR mode. Take the same $10,000 to $15,000 and add the pre-filled 3 years. CAGR is ((15,000 / 10,000)(1/3) – 1) x 100 = 14.47% per year, and the tool adds that money growing at this rate doubles in about 5.1 years. A longer example: $10,000 growing to $20,000 over 5 years is a 100% total gain but a CAGR of only 14.87% per year, because compounding does part of the work.
AAGR mode. Paste the pre-filled series: revenue of 100,000, then 120,000, then 150,000, then 165,000. The yearly rates are 20.00%, 25.00%, and 10.00%, printed in the tool’s table. Their average is (20 + 25 + 10) / 3 = 18.33%. The result line also reports the total growth over the span, 65.00%, and the CAGR, 18.17%, so you can see the small gap that uneven growth opens between the two annual measures.
The bars make the AAGR story visible: growth slowed hard in year 3, and the average hides that slowdown. The year-by-year table in the tool is the part to read when the pattern matters, for example when a business claims steady growth on the strength of one strong year.
Growth rates for stocks and funds
A stock growth rate is the compound growth rate applied to a stock price. If you bought shares worth $1,000 five years ago and they are worth $2,000 today, the stock growth rate is (2,000 / 1,000)(1/5) – 1 = 14.87% per year in CAGR mode. The same method works for mutual funds, ETFs, real estate, or a business valued at two points in time, and it is the standard way economists report series like the GDP figures published by the Bureau of Economic Analysis GDP data pages: a change between two dated values, annualized when the span is longer than a year.
Three things to know when measuring stock growth. First, a price-only growth rate does not include dividends. A stock that paid steady dividends grew your wealth faster than its price chart suggests. Second, growth rates are most meaningful over medium to long periods, typically three years or more; over a few months, noise dominates. Third, adjust for inflation if you want the real picture: a 14.87% nominal growth rate with 3% inflation is roughly 11.5% in real terms. To compare two stocks, compute each one’s CAGR over the same period; the higher rate grew faster, though it says nothing about the risk taken to get there. For the compounding side of the same math, our compound annual growth calculator works the formula in the forward direction, projecting a starting value at a set rate.
Doubling time and the Rule of 72
A growth rate tells you the speed; the doubling time tells you what that speed means. The exact formula is doubling time = ln(2) / ln(1 + rate), and CAGR mode shows it automatically whenever your rate is positive. At the pre-filled example’s 14.47% the exact answer is about 5.1 years. The classic shortcut is the Rule of 72: divide 72 by the annual percentage rate. At 6% money doubles in about 12 years, at 8% in about 9 years, at 10% in about 7.2 years, and at 12% in about 6 years.
The comparison example shows why the distinction matters. Take $1,000 growing to $2,000 over 10 years: the total gain is 100%, the simple annual rate is 10% per year (100 / 10), but the CAGR is only 7.18% per year, because compounding does part of the work. The doubling time at 7.18% is 10.0 years, which closes the loop: a steady 7.18% doubles money in exactly the 10 years the example spans. Investor.gov’s Investor.gov guide to small savings and compounding walks through the same effect with everyday savings amounts.
What competing calculators miss
The top ranking CAGR calculators each do one thing well and stop there: a CAGR-only tool cannot tell you the total change or the average of the yearly rates, and several present CAGR as if it were the only meaning of growth rate. One widely ranked example even states that $100 growing to $800 in 10 years is an 800% increase, when the total growth is 700% and the CAGR is 23.11%. Others annualize without showing a doubling time, and none of the CAGR-only tools will average a pasted series for you.
This page keeps all three measures in one tool, labels every result with the mode that produced it, prints the year-by-year table behind the AAGR, and adds the exact doubling time next to every positive CAGR. If a fund or a company quotes only one of the three numbers, you can run the other two here in under a minute and see what the smoothing hides.
Frequently asked questions
A simple growth rate is the total percentage change between a starting value and an ending value: ((Ending – Beginning) / Beginning) x 100. A compound growth rate, or CAGR, is the steady annual rate that would compound the starting value into the ending value over a given number of years: (Ending / Beginning)^(1 / Years) – 1. Use the simple rate for total change and CAGR for annualized, comparable performance. This calculator computes both: pick Total mode for the first and CAGR mode for the second.
Divide the current value by the value when you bought it, raise that to the power of 1 divided by the number of years, and subtract 1. For example, $1,000 growing to $2,000 over 5 years gives (2)^0.2 – 1 = 14.87% per year, which is exactly what CAGR mode returns for those inputs. Remember this price-based rate excludes dividends, so your total return was higher if the stock paid them.
AAGR is the arithmetic average of each year’s growth rates over a period, and this calculator’s AAGR mode computes it from a pasted series of yearly values. Use it when you want to see year-by-year patterns, such as whether business revenue growth is consistent or slowing. Use CAGR when you want the true compounded annual return for comparing investments, because AAGR ignores compounding and can overstate growth when yearly results swing a lot.
Yes. If the ending value is smaller than the starting value, the result is negative, which means the value shrank. A drop from $10,000 to $8,000 is a -20.00% growth rate in Total mode. The CAGR of a losing investment is likewise negative: $10,000 falling to $8,000 over 4 years is a CAGR of -5.43% per year.
No. The calculator measures only the change between the starting value and the ending value you enter. Dividends, interest payouts, deposits, and withdrawals during the period are not factored in. For a full total-return picture, add reinvested income to your ending value first.
Because they measure different things. A 100% total gain over 5 years sounds like 20% a year, but compounding means the true annual rate is 14.87%: growing 14.87% each year for five years doubles the money. The longer the period, the bigger the gap between the headline total and the annualized rate, which is exactly why CAGR exists.
Yes. Choose the AAGR mode, paste one value per line (oldest first), and press Calculate. You get the AAGR, a year-by-year rate table, and the CAGR and total growth over the same span for comparison. Each year-over-year rate is ((this year – last year) / last year) x 100, and the AAGR is the plain average of those rates.
That is normal when growth is uneven. AAGR averages the yearly percentages without compounding them, so a single big year pulls the average up more than compounding math would. In the worked example on this page the AAGR is 18.33% against a CAGR of 18.17%. CAGR is the steady rate that actually connects the start to the end. Neither is wrong; they answer different questions.
Divide the natural log of 2 by the natural log of 1 plus your annual rate: at 10% per year the doubling time is about 7.3 years. The Rule of 72 gives a quick estimate: 72 / 10 = 7.2 years. The calculator shows the exact doubling time in CAGR mode whenever the rate is positive: the pre-filled example, $10,000 to $15,000 over 3 years at 14.47%, doubles in about 5.1 years.
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References
- Investor.gov (US Securities and Exchange Commission), “Small Savings Add Up to Big Money” – explains compounding with worked savings examples, the effect behind the gap between total growth and CAGR on this page. Investor.gov: Small Savings Add Up to Big Money. Accessed October 2026.
- Investor.gov (US Securities and Exchange Commission), “Compound Interest Calculator” – the SEC’s own compounding tool, a cross-check for the CAGR and doubling-time figures this calculator produces. Investor.gov: Compound Interest Calculator. Accessed October 2026.
- Khan Academy, “Compound Interest” tutorial, Core Finance – a step-by-step treatment of compounding and annual rates that matches the formulas used here. Khan Academy: Compound Interest Tutorial. Accessed October 2026.
- US Bureau of Economic Analysis, “Gross Domestic Product” data pages – the official source for GDP growth rates, the best-known real-world use of period growth rates and their annualization. BEA: Gross Domestic Product. Accessed October 2026.
- Equity Replay, “CAGR Calculator: How to Calculate Annualized Investment Return” – a worked treatment of CAGR versus total return, including the warning against dividing a total return by the number of years. Equity Replay: CAGR and Annualized Investment Return. Accessed October 2026.