Home/ Calculators/ SIP Calculator
SIP Calculator
What a monthly SIP or a one-time lumpsum grows to, with the year-by-year split between contributions and returns.
Runs in your browser Nothing is uploaded Free, no sign-up
Result
—
A systematic investment plan puts a fixed sum in every month regardless of price. The arithmetic of what that becomes is straightforward; the behaviour it requires is not.
Where the money comes from
In the first few years almost all of the balance is your own contributions. Somewhere around year eight to ten, returns overtake contributions, and from there the gap widens quickly. The year-by-year table makes the crossover visible — it is the single best argument for not stopping.
About the return assumption
12% a year is a common long-run assumption for Indian equity funds, but no fund delivers 12% every year. Real returns arrive unevenly, and the order matters. Treat the output as a central estimate, not a promise.
Making it work harder
Raising the instalment annually with your salary does more than chasing a better fund. A 10% annual step-up on a 20-year SIP typically adds more than half again to the final corpus.
Frequently asked questions
What return should I assume for a SIP?
12% a year is a common long-run assumption for Indian equity funds, and 8% to 9% for hybrid or debt. No fund delivers the same number every year, so treat the output as a central estimate and re-run it with a lower rate to see how sensitive your plan is.
Can I stop or pause a SIP?
Yes. SIPs carry no lock-in except ELSS, which locks each instalment for three years. You can pause, reduce or stop at any time, though stopping during a fall is precisely when the arithmetic works against you.
Is SIP better than a lump sum?
Mathematically a lump sum usually wins because the money is invested for longer — switch this calculator to One-time lumpsum and you can see the gap for yourself. Behaviourally a SIP wins, because it removes the timing decision and keeps people invested through falls. Most people should use a SIP for monthly surplus and stagger any large sum over a few months.
How are SIP returns taxed?
Each instalment is a separate purchase with its own holding period. For equity funds, units held over a year are taxed at 12.5% above a ₹1.25 lakh annual exemption; units held for less are taxed at 20%.
Why does this show a different figure from another SIP calculator?
Because calculators disagree about what “15% a year” means once it is turned into a monthly rate, and nobody tells you which one you are looking at.
This calculator divides the annual figure by twelve, so 15% becomes 1.25% a month. That is the convention used by AMFI’s own investor-education site, and by Bajaj, Kotak, Upstox and Policybazaar. Compounded over a year, 1.25% a month works out to an effective 16.08%.
Groww and Kuvera instead treat 15% as the effective annual return and derive a monthly rate of 1.1715% from it. Both are defensible — it is the same distinction as a nominal and an effective rate on a loan — but the gap compounds: about 6% apart over ten years, and 25% apart over thirty.
Every result on this page states which basis it used, so you can line it up against whatever else you are comparing.
Which reading of the return is correct?
Neither is wrong, but they answer slightly different questions. Fund returns are published as CAGR, which is an effective annual figure, so reading your 15% as effective is the stricter interpretation. Dividing by twelve is the long-standing market convention and is what most Indian calculators do.
What matters more than the choice is knowing which one produced the number in front of you. Treat either as a projection rather than a forecast: the assumed return is the part most likely to be wrong, and a single percentage point moves a thirty-year corpus far more than the convention does.