CAGR Calculator
The smoothed annual rate that takes a start value to an end value over a period.
CAGR
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Total growth
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Multiple
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Worked example
Going from 10,000 to 25,000 over five years is a 150% total gain, which annualises to 20.11% — not 30%. The difference is compounding.
CAGR is a smoothed rate, not a description of what happened. It tells you the constant annual rate that would produce the same end value; the actual path may have gone up 80% then down 30%. Useful for comparing investments of different lengths on one axis, misleading if read as performance consistency.
The negative case
CAGR works for declines too, and requires positive start and end values. A series that crosses zero has no meaningful CAGR, which is why the formula fails there rather than returning a number.