Crypto ROI Calculator
See both your raw return and your annualized CAGR. Comparing a short-term flip to a multi-year hold is meaningless without annualization — this calculator does it automatically.
Profit / Loss
+$500.00
Total ROI
+50.00%
Annualized ROI
+50.00%
CAGR
Benchmark comparison
Annualized return measured against common long-run benchmarks.
- vs S&P 500 (10.5% avg)
- Beats by 39.50 pp
- vs BTC since 2013 (~50% avg)
- Trails by 0.00 pp
- Money multiple
- 1.50×
- Holding period (days)
- 365
What is ROI in crypto?
ROI — return on investment — is the percent gain (or loss) on money you committed to a trade or hold. It strips a profit number out of its dollar value and turns it into something portable: making $5,000 on a $10,000 position is a 50% ROI, no different from making $50 on a $100 position. Both let you rank investments against each other.
For crypto specifically, two ROIs matter: total ROI (the raw percent over the entire holding period) and annualized ROI (the equivalent yearly rate, also called CAGR). Without annualization you can't fairly compare a 90% return earned in 6 months against a 90% return earned over 3 years — even though the dollar gains are identical, one strategy is roughly twice as efficient.
How to calculate crypto ROI manually
Total ROI is a one-line formula: (Final − Initial) ÷ Initial × 100. Annualized ROI uses the compound-growth formula: ((Final ÷ Initial) ^ (365 ÷ days) − 1) × 100.
| Step | Worked example | Result |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Profit | $1,500 − $1,000 | $500 |
| 2. Multiple | $1,500 ÷ $1,000 | 1.50× |
| 3. Total ROI | ($500 ÷ $1,000) × 100 | 50% |
| 4. Annualized (730 days) | (1.50 ^ (365/730)) − 1 | 22.47% |
| 5. Annualized (365 days) | (1.50 ^ (365/365)) − 1 | 50% |
Notice how the same $500 profit gives very different annualized rates depending on how long the money was tied up. A 50% gain in one year (50% CAGR) is dramatically more efficient than the same 50% earned over two years (22.47% CAGR).
Real-world examples
- Bitcoin 2020–2021 bull run: $10,000 invested in BTC on Jan 1, 2020 (~$7,200) and sold at the Nov 2021 peak (~$67,000) → final value ≈ $93,000. Total ROI 830%, annualized ~217% over 700 days.
- Ethereum 2022 drawdown: $5,000 in ETH at the Nov 2021 peak ($4,800) → worth ~$1,000 by end of 2022 ($1,200). Total ROI −80%, annualized −80% over 365 days. Holding through 2023–2024 recovered most of it.
- Index comparison: $10,000 in the S&P 500 from Jan 2020 to Jan 2025 → roughly $17,000 (≈70% total, ~11% annualized). Inside the same window, BTC returned roughly 4–5× more in absolute terms but with 4–5× the volatility.
Common mistakes when reporting ROI
- Quoting total ROI on long holds. "I'm up 400% on Bitcoin" sounds great. If you bought in 2017, that's actually around 22% annualized — competitive with a good index fund, not life-changing.
- Ignoring fees and slippage. Pure ROI ignores trading costs. Subtract 0.2–1% per round-trip before reporting net ROI, especially on small trades or DEX transactions.
- Forgetting tax drag. A 50% pre-tax ROI on a short-term trade becomes ~30% after a 37% top-bracket tax bite. Long-term gains in the US are taxed at 0/15/20% — a major reason holding for over a year usually beats constant flipping.
- Comparing apples to oranges. A 1-week trade with 20% ROI is not better than a 10-year hold with 20% ROI. Annualize before comparing — or use multiples (10× over 10 years vs 1.2× over 1 week).
- Survivorship bias in "my crypto ROI is 1000%". People remember their winners. The average crypto portfolio also holds dead coins from 2017–2018 cycles that never recovered. Report ROI on the full basket, not your top holding.
Frequently asked questions
- Total ROI is the simple percent gain over the entire holding period: (final − initial) / initial × 100. Annualized ROI (CAGR) translates that into an equivalent yearly rate — useful for comparing investments held for different lengths of time. A 50% return over two years is a much lower annualized return than 50% over six months.
- The compound annual growth rate formula: ((final / initial) ^ (365 / days) − 1) × 100. For a $1,000 → $1,500 trade held 365 days, that's 50% annualized. The same trade held 730 days annualizes to ~22.47%.
- Annualized, almost always. Total ROI rewards long holding periods even if the rate of return is poor. Annualized lets you compare a 6-month crypto trade against a 5-year mortgage payoff against a 10-year index-fund hold on the same scale.
- For context: the S&P 500 has averaged around 10.5% annualized over the last 30 years. Bitcoin has averaged roughly 50% annualized since 2013 — but with multiple 70%+ drawdowns along the way. Anything beating the index over a multi-year window is a win; anything below it isn't worth the volatility.
- Because you held longer than a year. Annualization 'spreads' a multi-year gain across each year, so a 100% total return over 4 years becomes about 18.9% annualized — not 25%. Compounding works in the calculator's favour, which is why a constant rate of 18.9% × 4 years = 100%.
- No — it computes pure ROI from your input numbers. For fee-inclusive ROI use our crypto profit calculator, which subtracts trading fees before computing return. For after-tax ROI you'd need to factor in your local capital-gains rate (short-term in the US is typically your income-tax rate; long-term is 0/15/20%).
Related calculators
Pair this with another tool to run the full numbers.
Want exact P&L with fees?
Pair this ROI calculator with our crypto profit calculator to factor in trading fees.