XIRR Calculator
Finance & InvestmentCalculate XIRR for your mutual fund SIP, lumpsum, or portfolio with irregular cash flows. Get the true annualised return on any investment in seconds.
Reviewed by the thecalcu.com team · Last updated July 29, 2026
Cash Flow Entries
Enter each transaction — investments as outflows, redemptions and current portfolio value as inflows.
4 entries
XIRR (Annualised Return)
What is a XIRR?
The XIRR Calculator computes the Extended Internal Rate of Return, the true annualized return on an investment where money goes in and comes out at different times and in different amounts. Anyone contributing regularly to a brokerage account, a 401(k), or an IRA needs this metric because a simple percentage gain, or even CAGR, can't account for the timing of individual contributions. $500 invested monthly for three years is not the same as $18,000 invested as a single lump sum on day one, and XIRR is the metric that captures that difference precisely.
XIRR is the rate r at which the net present value of all your cash flows equals zero. Every contribution is a negative cash flow, every withdrawal or the current account value is positive, and the exact date of each one matters. There's no algebraic shortcut to solve for r, it takes an iterative numerical method, which is exactly why having a calculator that runs that math instantly, rather than building a spreadsheet from scratch, saves real time.
For most long-term investors, XIRR matters because wealth gets built through regular contributions, not one lump sum. A $500 monthly contribution to an index fund over ten years involves 120 separate transactions on 120 different dates, the earliest ones have compounded for a decade, the most recent barely started. Rolling all of that into one honest return figure, comparable to a savings account APY or an index benchmark, is exactly what XIRR does. It's also the methodology behind the "personal rate of return" or "money-weighted return" many brokerages and 401(k) platforms already show you.
XIRR also handles a specific real-world wrinkle well: a lump-sum contribution made during a market dip, layered on top of an ongoing recurring investment. If you added $10,000 in March 2020 when markets fell sharply, while your regular contributions continued uninterrupted, a simple average-return calculation won't capture the outsized benefit of that timing, XIRR does. If your original plan assumed 10% annual growth but your actual five-year XIRR comes out to 6%, that gap is real underperformance worth investigating, not rounding error.
How to use this XIRR calculator
Enter the Date of your first transaction, click the date field in the first row and select the date of your first contribution. For a recurring investment, that's the date of your very first deposit.
Enter the Amount, type the contribution amount into the Amount field. Always use a positive number, whether the transaction is a contribution or a withdrawal.
Set the Type to "Investment", the Type dropdown should read "Investment" for every outflow, money leaving your bank account to go into the fund or account.
Click "+ Add Transaction" for each subsequent contribution, add a row for every deposit, whether that's a monthly contribution, an annual lump sum, or an employer match. For a monthly plan, expect one row per month.
Add a final row for the current account value, in the last row, enter today's date, your current account balance, and set Type to "Return / Value." If you've made any withdrawals along the way, add those as separate "Return / Value" rows with their actual dates and amounts.
Read the results panel, XIRR is shown prominently. Compare it against a benchmark you care about, an S&P 500 index fund's historical return, or a savings account APY, and check Total Gains and Absolute Return for the full picture.
Why Use a XIRR Calculator?
Calculating XIRR by hand isn't realistic, it requires an iterative numerical method, not a formula you can work out on paper. Even in a spreadsheet, setting up the XIRR function correctly with matched date and cash flow ranges takes time and is easy to get wrong. This calculator takes your entries and returns the answer instantly.
The most common use case is a portfolio performance check. Whenever you see a "personal rate of return" figure on a brokerage or retirement account statement, it's typically computed with this same XIRR methodology. Entering your own transaction history here lets you verify that figure, or isolate the return for a specific sub-account or time period the platform doesn't break out separately.
The second big use case is deciding whether to sell. If you're weighing whether to move money out of a fund after several years of contributions, plugging in your actual contribution dates and amounts gives you your real annualized return, not the fund's headline return, which assumes a single lump-sum investor. A fund marketed with a 12% average annual return means little if your personal XIRR, based on when you actually bought in, is only 7%.
Finally, XIRR lets you compare accounts fairly. Want to know if your taxable brokerage account has outperformed what the same money would have earned in a high-yield savings account? Enter your actual contribution history and compare the resulting XIRR against the account's published APY over the same period.
Who Should Use This Calculator?
Investors making regular contributions to a brokerage account or IRA are the core audience. After each calendar year, entering every contribution date and amount alongside the current balance produces a true annualized return, far more meaningful than a simple percentage gain that ignores when the money actually went in.
Investors who added lump sums during market dips need XIRR to see the real impact of that timing. A one-time contribution during a downturn, layered on an ongoing monthly investment, creates an irregular cash flow pattern that a basic percentage return can't represent accurately. XIRR gives one honest number for the whole mixed history.
Self-directed investors tracking their own portfolios outside of a brokerage's built-in reporting will find this useful for cross-checking a platform's stated return or slicing performance by account, fund, or time window. The ROI Calculator is a useful companion for single-transaction gains where timing doesn't need to be modeled.
Anyone comparing a 401(k) or employer retirement plan against a taxable account can use XIRR to put both on the same footing, since contribution schedules and amounts rarely match between the two.
What Insights Does the XIRR Calculator Give You?
XIRR (Annualized Return) is the headline output, a single number representing the effective annual return on the entire investment history, weighted correctly by the timing and size of every transaction. A XIRR of 9% means your money has grown at the equivalent of 9% a year, compounded, regardless of exactly when each dollar went in. Use it to benchmark against index fund returns, savings account rates, or a target retirement growth rate.
Total Invested is the sum of every contribution, your actual cash outlay, and the baseline for understanding how much of your current balance represents growth versus principal.
Current Value is the sum of all inflows, which in a standard calculation is your account's current market value entered as the final transaction. Partial withdrawals along the way are counted here too.
Total Gains shows the absolute dollar profit: current value minus total invested. Seeing this in real dollars, not just a percentage, grounds the XIRR figure in what it actually means for your account.
Absolute Return expresses that same gain as a percentage of invested capital. A 35% absolute return over four years sounds solid, but corresponds to a XIRR of only about 7.8% a year, seeing both numbers side by side shows exactly why time-adjusting returns matters.
Formula & Methodology
XIRR finds the annualized rate r such that the net present value of all cash flows, discounted back to the first transaction date, equals zero. XIRR formula: Σ Cᵢ ÷ (1 + r)^(dᵢ − d₀) ÷ 365 = 0 Variable definitions: - Cᵢ = cash flow at transaction i (negative for contributions, positive for withdrawals or current value) - dᵢ = date of transaction i (in days since epoch) - d₀ = date of the first transaction (the reference date) - (dᵢ − d₀) ÷ 365 = time in years between d₀ and transaction i - r = XIRR, the annualized rate being solved for Solving method: Newton-Raphson iteration. Starting from an initial guess of r = 0.1 (10%), each iteration refines the estimate using: r₍ₙ₊₁₎ = rₙ − f(rₙ) ÷ f′(rₙ) Where f(r) is the NPV function and f′(r) is its derivative with respect to r. Iteration continues until the change in r between steps is less than 0.0000000001 (1 × 10⁻¹⁰), giving precision to many decimal places. Worked example: Suppose you contributed $10,000 to a brokerage account on three separate dates, and your current balance is $38,000 as of June 13, 2026: | Date | Cash Flow | |---|---| | Jan 1, 2023 | −$10,000 | | Jan 1, 2024 | −$10,000 | | Jan 1, 2025 | −$10,000 | | Jun 13, 2026 | +$38,000 | - Total invested: $30,000 - Current value: $38,000 - Absolute return: ($8,000 ÷ $30,000) × 100 = 26.67% - Investment period: approximately 3.45 years (Jan 1, 2023 to Jun 13, 2026) - XIRR: ≈ 9.74% per year (solved iteratively) A XIRR of 9.74% means the account grew at the equivalent of 9.74% a year, compounded, far more informative than the raw 26.67% absolute return. To model what a similar contribution pattern could grow into over another decade at a comparable rate, use the CAGR Calculator to project the compounded outcome, or the Compound Interest Calculator to model a single lump sum at a fixed rate for comparison. Key assumptions: - A year is defined as 365 days (no leap-year adjustment in the exponent) - All cash flows use the exact calendar dates as entered - Contributions (outflows) are treated as negative values internally; the UI converts "Investment" type entries to negative automatically - The calculator tries several different initial guesses to avoid landing on a local minimum during Newton-Raphson convergence - XIRR is undefined if all cash flows carry the same sign (all outflows or all inflows)
Frequently Asked Questions