XIRR calculator
If you paid ₹5,000 a month for 36 months and the folio is now worth ₹2,20,000, your absolute return looks like 22% — but your XIRR is a different number entirely, because each instalment was invested for a different length of time. XIRR is the only figure that accounts for that, and it is what your fund statement quotes.
What you paid, and what it is worth
What leaves your bank account every month. Type any amount — the slider is just a shortcut.
Today’s statement value. It can be below what you put in — the result will simply be negative.
Your real return
What you investWhat compounding adds
| Year | Monthly | Invested so far | Returns | Value at year end |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | ₹5,000 | ₹60,000 | ₹4,284 | ₹64,284 |
| 2 | ₹5,000 | ₹1,20,000 | ₹17,209 | ₹1,37,209 |
| 3 | ₹5,000 | ₹1,80,000 | ₹39,935 | ₹2,19,935 |
Why absolute return is the wrong number
Suppose you paid ₹5,000 a month for three years — ₹1,80,000 in total — and the folio is worth ₹2,20,000. The gain is ₹40,000, so absolute return is 22%.
That 22% is real, but it is not a rate. Over what period? Your first instalment was invested for 36 months. Your last was invested for one. Dividing the total gain by the total paid treats all of that money as though it arrived on day one, which it did not.
XIRR fixes this by treating every instalment as its own dated cash flow and solving for the single annual rate that makes their present values sum to the current value. It is the number your fund statement quotes, and the only one you can fairly compare against a fixed deposit rate.
Why XIRR looks higher than the rate you put in the SIP calculator
This trips people up constantly, and almost nobody explains it, so: XIRR is an effective annual rate. The "expected return" field in a SIP calculator is usually a nominal rate compounded monthly. They are different quantities.
12% nominal compounded monthly is 1% a month, and 1.0112 − 1 = 12.68% effective. So a SIP that the projection tool modelled at 12% will show an XIRR near 12.68%. Nothing is wrong; the two tools are quoting the same growth in two conventions.
That is why this calculator shows both rows. The "same thing as a monthly-compounded rate" figure is the number to type back into the SIP calculator if you want it to reproduce your actual result.
If your cash flows are not a neat monthly series
Plenty of real folios are messier — a lump sum at the start, a SIP that paused, a partial redemption. This page models the common case of equal monthly instalments plus a single current value.
For genuinely irregular flows, use a spreadsheet: put each date in one column and each amount in
the next, investments negative and redemptions positive, then =XIRR(amounts, dates).
That is the same computation this page performs; the
methodology page sets out the equation being solved and the
root-finding method.
Before you rely on this
An estimate, not a forecast
This is arithmetic applied to assumptions you chose. Mutual funds carry market risk, returns are not guaranteed, and past performance does not indicate future results. Nothing here is personalised advice — for decisions of any size, speak to a SEBI-registered investment adviser.
Questions people actually ask
What is XIRR in a mutual fund?
The Extended Internal Rate of Return: the single annualised rate that makes a series of dated cash flows balance against the current value. Because it weights each payment by how long it was invested, it is the correct way to measure a SIP's return.
It is what AMCs and registrars quote on a SIP statement, so it is also the number you should compare across funds.
What is the difference between XIRR and CAGR?
CAGR handles one investment and one exit — a single start value, a single end value, one period. XIRR handles many payments on many dates.
Using CAGR on a SIP by treating the total invested as a day-one lump sum understates the return badly, because most of that money was not in fact invested on day one. The comparison is worked through in XIRR vs CAGR vs absolute returns.
My XIRR is negative. Is something broken?
No — it means the folio is currently worth less than you have paid in, which is entirely normal for an equity SIP in its first couple of years, or during a drawdown.
A negative XIRR early on says almost nothing about the eventual outcome. It is a snapshot, and the shorter the period, the less it means.
Can XIRR be misleading?
Over short periods, very. An XIRR computed over eight months annualises a brief move into a yearly rate, which can produce absurd figures in both directions — a 6% gain in four months annualises to something near 19%.
Treat XIRR as meaningful over periods of a year or more, and be sceptical of any annualised number drawn from a few months.