Skip to content
ToolBoxGenie

SIP Calculator

Calculators · Added 14 August 2026

Enter what you invest each month, the return you expect and how long you plan to keep going, and this calculator projects the maturity value — separating the money you put in from the growth on top of it. An optional step-up models raising the instalment every year, which is what most people actually do as their income rises.

%

An assumption, not a rate anyone is offering you.

yrs
%

Raises the instalment once a year.

How to use the sip calculator

  1. 1Enter the amount you invest each month.
  2. 2Enter the annual return you want to assume. This is your assumption about the future, not a rate anyone has offered you — see the FAQ on choosing one.
  3. 3Set the number of years you intend to keep investing.
  4. 4Optionally add an annual step-up percentage to raise the instalment once every twelve months.
  5. 5Press Calculate. Open the year-by-year breakdown to see how the balance splits between contributions and growth over time.

Examples

A standard ten-year SIP

Input
₹5,000 a month, 12% expected return, 10 years
Result
₹11,61,695 — of which ₹6,00,000 is invested and ₹5,61,695 is growth

Even after ten years the growth has not quite overtaken the money paid in. At 12% that crossover falls in year eleven.

The same SIP with a 10% annual step-up

Input
₹5,000 a month rising 10% each year, 12% return, 10 years
Result
₹16,87,163 — about 45% more than the same SIP held flat

The step-up is applied once every twelve months, so year two invests ₹5,500 a month, year three ₹6,050, and so on.

Why starting earlier beats investing more

Input
₹5,000 a month for 20 years versus ₹10,000 a month for 10 years
Result
₹49,95,740 versus ₹23,23,391 — despite the same ₹12,00,000 invested

Identical contributions, twice the result. The extra decade of compounding is doing all of it.

About the sip calculator

What a SIP actually does

A systematic investment plan is not a product. It is a schedule — a standing instruction to buy a fixed rupee amount of something at a fixed interval, regardless of the price on the day. The fund, the risk and the returns are entirely separate questions from the SIP itself.

The mechanism that gets talked about most is rupee cost averaging: a fixed amount buys more units when the price is low and fewer when it is high, so the average cost per unit comes out below the average price over the period. This is real, and it is also frequently oversold. It reduces the damage of investing everything immediately before a fall; it does not make a poor investment good, and over a long rising market a lump sum invested at the start would have done better.

The larger benefit is behavioural rather than mathematical. An automatic debit removes the monthly decision about whether now is a good time, which is the decision most people get wrong most reliably — stopping after a fall and restarting after a recovery is the single most expensive habit in retail investing.

Reading the year-by-year table honestly

The breakdown shows something the headline figure hides: for the first several years, almost the entire balance is money you put in. At a 12% assumption the growth does not overtake the contributions until year eleven — a ten-year SIP ends with slightly more paid in than earned. Investors who quit at year three because 'it isn't doing anything' are looking at exactly the part of the curve where nothing is supposed to have happened yet.

The other thing the table makes visible is how much the final years matter. In a twenty-year projection at that rate, the last five years add nearly as much as the entire first fifteen combined, because the growth is compounding on a much larger base. This is why extending a SIP is usually more powerful than increasing it, and why stopping early costs far more than the missed contributions.

None of this makes the projection a forecast. A smooth curve is what a constant rate produces; a real fund produces a jagged line that may sit well below the projection for years at a time before catching up, or may not catch up at all. Treat the number as a planning input to be revisited, not a balance you have been promised.

Frequently asked questions

What return should I assume?
There is no correct answer, which is why the field is blank rather than pre-filled. What is defensible is to use a long-run figure for the asset class you are actually investing in, not the best year you have seen, and then to check what happens if you are two or three percentage points wrong. If the plan only works at 15% and falls apart at 10%, that is worth knowing before you commit rather than after.
Is the maturity value guaranteed?
No. A SIP into a market-linked fund has no guaranteed return of any kind, and this calculator cannot give you one. It answers a conditional question — if the average return were exactly this, the balance would be that. Real returns arrive unevenly, and the order they arrive in changes the outcome even when the average is identical.
Does it account for expense ratios or exit loads?
No. Enter a return net of costs if you want the figure to reflect them — subtracting the expense ratio from your assumed return is the usual approximation. Exit loads, which apply when you redeem early, and capital gains tax on withdrawal are not modelled at all.
Why does the calculator assume the instalment goes in at the start of the month?
Because that is how a SIP mandate normally works: the money is debited on a fixed date and buys units immediately, so it earns for that whole month. The standard closed-form formula makes the same assumption, which is why the result matches published SIP calculators to the rupee.
What does the step-up actually do?
It raises the monthly instalment by the given percentage once every twelve months, compounding. A 10% step-up on ₹5,000 gives ₹5,500 in year two and ₹6,050 in year three. It is a close model of increasing a SIP in line with a yearly salary rise, and it has a disproportionate effect because the increases happen early enough to compound.

Related tools