ROI Calculator
Enter what you put in and what you got back. Instantly see your return on investment, net profit and annualized ROI.
What is ROI?
Return on investment (ROI) is the simplest possible profitability ratio: how much money you made, relative to how much you spent to make it. Marketers use it to judge campaigns, founders use it to judge projects, investors use it to judge everything.
Example. You spend $10,000 on an ad campaign and it generates $13,000 in revenue. Net profit is $3,000, and ROI is ($13,000 − $10,000) ÷ $10,000 = 30%. Every dollar returned $1.30.
Why annualize it
A 30% ROI in one year is excellent; the same 30% stretched over five years is mediocre. Annualized ROI converts the result into a per-year rate using compounding:
That five-year 30% becomes about 5.4% per year — suddenly comparable to any other yearly investment.
What counts as "investment"?
The number is only as honest as the inputs. Ad spend is the obvious one, but real investment often includes agency fees, creative production, software, and your team's time. The most common ROI mistake is counting revenue fully while counting costs partially — which is exactly why ROAS (ad revenue ÷ ad spend) usually looks better than ROI. If a campaign's ROAS is 400% but its true ROI is 8%, the business has a cost problem, not a marketing problem.
Frequently asked questions
What is a good ROI?
It depends on the context. The long-run stock market averages roughly 7–10% per year after inflation, so many investors treat that as a baseline. A marketing campaign or business project is usually expected to clear 20–50%+ to justify the risk and effort. There is no universal "good" number — compare against your cost of capital and alternatives.
What is the difference between ROI and ROAS?
ROI measures profit relative to total cost: (Revenue − Cost) ÷ Cost. ROAS measures revenue relative to ad cost only: Revenue ÷ Ad Spend. A 400% ROAS sounds great until you subtract product and operating costs — ROI tells you whether you actually made money.
Why annualize ROI?
A 30% ROI over 1 year and a 30% ROI over 5 years are very different outcomes. Annualized ROI converts multi-year returns into a per-year rate so you can compare investments with different time horizons apples-to-apples.
Can ROI be negative?
Yes. If your total return is less than your investment, ROI is negative — you lost money. Investing $10,000 and getting back $8,000 is an ROI of −20%.
What are the limitations of ROI?
Simple ROI ignores time (use annualized ROI for that), risk, and cash-flow timing. It also depends on what you count as "cost" — leave out staff time or overhead and the number flatters you. Use it as a first-pass filter, not the whole decision.