Try these example inputs in the XIRR calculator.
These figures match this guide's worked example. They are illustrative. They stay on this device and never appear in the URL.
XIRR — extended internal rate of return — is the constant yearly rate that makes dated cash flows net to a present value of zero. It answers "given when money went in and came out, what annual rate fits this path?" It is not the same as CAGR, which assumes one lump sum.
Key takeaways
Find the annual rate that makes the present value of every dated cash flow sum to zero.
You need at least two cash flows, on real calendar dates, and they cannot all point the same way. An all-deposit list, or an all-withdrawal list, has no solution. If more than one rate could fit, the honest answer is to leave the result blank.
This site follows Excel’s XIRR convention: year fractions are actual days divided by 365, measured from the first date.
Invest $10,000 on 1 January 2019. On 1 January 2020 the account is worth $11,000. That is 365 days, so XIRR is 10% — the same number CAGR would give for a one-year lump sum.
The difference shows up when cash moves in the middle. If you add money later, CAGR would pretend the extra dollars had been there from day one and overstate the rate. XIRR gives the later deposit less time to compound.
A three-line case: −$10,000 on 1 January 2019, −$5,000 on 1 January 2020, and +$16,500 on 1 January 2021. The first two lines are deposits (money out of your pocket). The last line is the ending value (money back). That is not a 10% CAGR on the original $10,000, because $5,000 of the capital arrived a year later. Paste those rows into the XIRR calculator.
Leap years add a day. Actual/365 still divides by 365, so a 366-day span is a little more than one year in this convention. Whole-year CAGR would count that stretch as 1.00 year if you typed “1.”
If two very different rates both make NPV near zero, this site leaves the result blank rather than picking a favorite root. If every flow has the same sign, there is no rate. Residual NPV after the solver is shown so you can see how close the fit is.
Try the same dates in the XIRR calculator. Deposits are signed as outflows for you; you do not type a minus.
Microsoft’s XIRR help example (opens in a new tab) — a $10,000 outflow on 1 January 2008 and four later inflows — solves to about 37.34%. Irregular dates are the point of XIRR.
It is a money-weighted annual rate for a path that already happened. Extra contributions are not treated as if they had earned the full stretch.
XIRR does not say whether the path was smooth, whether fees were high, or whether the next year will look like the last. Two very different calendars can share a rate. It also says nothing about a company’s market cap or quality.
If there were no extra deposits or withdrawals, CAGR is the simpler reading of the same start and end. Use the CAGR calculator for that lump-sum case.
A company price history is not an XIRR. Type the dated deposits, withdrawals, and ending value in the XIRR calculator. The ranking will not invent a contribution history.
This site follows Microsoft Excel’s XIRR convention: year fractions are actual days divided by 365. See Microsoft’s XIRR function documentation (opens in a new tab). CFA curriculum treatments of money-weighted return describe the same idea. The calculator implements that convention; it is not a substitute for those texts.
For general education only. Nothing here is investment advice.
Formulas and worked examples are MarketCapLens's. See who checks the numbers.