ROI Calculator

Sales revenue does not tell you whether an investment made money. First subtract every cost required to produce that revenue, then compare the remaining profit with the amount invested. If your starting question is “what is ROI?”, that is the practical answer: return on investment expresses this gain or loss as a percentage. A positive figure means profit, a negative figure means loss and 0% marks break-even.

Basic mode suits a one-off purchase, project or campaign. Revenue and cost need to cover the same period and use the same currency. For rent, subscriptions or another steady monthly income stream, periodic mode follows the initial investment over a chosen number of months.

How to calculate ROI

ROI formula: (Net profit ÷ Total investment cost) × 100

A project that costs $40,000 and produces $58,000 in revenue has $18,000 in net profit. Divide 18,000 by 40,000 and multiply by 100 to get 45%. Each $1 invested therefore produced $0.45 in profit in addition to returning the original dollar.

The difficult part is usually not the formula but the cost figure. Purchase price or ad spend may represent only one part of the investment. Depending on the case, include:

• commissions, shipping, refunds and payment processing fees;
• labour, software, maintenance and contracted services;
• interest and the share of overhead directly attributable to the project.

Deduct refunds and discounts from revenue, and treat taxes consistently on both sides. Missing a fee inflates the result. This is why the page can serve as a simple net profit calculator as well as a return on investment calculator. USD, EUR, GBP and TRY are supported; changing currency affects the number format rather than the percentage.

A larger percentage is not automatically better

A 30% return earned in six months is different from 30% earned over five years. Risk, inflation, taxes, borrowing costs and cash-flow timing also affect the comparison. No single threshold works for every asset or business, so the result panel reports profit, break-even or loss instead of assigning a generic grade.

With regular monthly income, periodic mode becomes an investment return calculator and payback period calculator in one. Enter the initial cost, monthly net income and analysis length. A $120,000 investment returning $12,000 net per month has a simple payback period of 10 months. The displayed simple annualized ROI scales the period percentage to 12 months. It is not a compounded annual return or IRR and does not model changing cash flows.

Keep ad return separate from the whole investment

ROI and ROAS should not be used interchangeably. ROAS compares ad revenue with ad spend alone. A marketing ROI calculator also includes product, staff, platform and other operating costs. Campaign revenue may look strong while the wider investment still loses money, which is why the two measures answer different questions.