SIP Calculator
Enter your monthly instalment, an expected return and a horizon to see the projected corpus, how much of it is your own money, and what it is worth once inflation is taken out.
Your SIP
Projected corpus
Estimated future value
after — — about — in today's money
- Total invested —
- Wealth gained —
- Corpus at maturity —
- Same corpus in today's money —
What this calculator assumes
- The monthly rate is the annual rate divided by twelve, and each instalment is invested at the start of the month. This is the industry convention every Indian AMC calculator follows, which is why the figure above matches theirs.
- The return is constant every single month. No real equity fund behaves this way, and the smooth curve is the single biggest thing the projection gets wrong.
- Every instalment is paid, on time, for the whole period, and nothing is withdrawn along the way.
- The expected return is treated as a net figure. The scheme's expense ratio, exit load and stamp duty are not deducted separately, so enter a return you believe you would receive after costs.
- No tax is applied. Capital gains on redemption are not modelled, and this site does not hold sourced capital gains rates.
- The inflation figure you enter is used only to restate the corpus in today's money. It is your assumption, not a published forecast.
How the SIP projection is calculated
A SIP is a series of equal instalments, each of which compounds for a different length of time. The last instalment you pay compounds for one month; the first compounds for the whole tenure. Adding those up gives the future value of an annuity:
FV = P × ((1 + i)n − 1) ÷ i × (1 + i)
P is the monthly instalment, n is the number of instalments, and i is the monthly rate. Take ₹10,000 a month for 15 years at 12% a year. That is n = 180 and i = 0.01, which gives a projected corpus of about ₹50.46 lakh. You will have paid in ₹18 lakh, so roughly ₹32.46 lakh of the total is return rather than contribution. The contribution grows in a straight line; the return does not, which is why the gap between the two widens sharply in the later years. Expand the year-by-year table above and the shape is unmistakable.
The annuity-due convention, and why it matters
Look at the trailing × (1 + i) in the formula. That factor exists because the instalment is assumed to be invested at the start of each month rather than the end — an annuity-due rather than an ordinary annuity. Every mainstream Indian calculator makes this assumption, AMFI's included, and matching it is deliberate: a reader comparing this page with Groww or an AMC site should see the same number rather than wonder which one is broken. It is not a rounding detail either — on the example above it adds a full month of compounding to the entire corpus, about ₹50,000 on a ₹50 lakh projection.
Dividing the annual rate by twelve is a convention, not arithmetic
Here is the part almost no calculator admits to. A 12% annual return does not become a 1% monthly return. Compounding 1% a month twelve times produces 12.68% for the year, so entering 12% is really asking for an effective annual return closer to 12.7%. The true monthly equivalent of 12% a year is about 0.949%.
Over a long horizon that gap compounds into something visible. Our ₹10,000 SIP over 15 years projects ₹50.46 lakh on the industry convention, but only about ₹47.6 lakh if you convert the rate properly — a difference of roughly ₹2.9 lakh, or 6% of the corpus. The convention is universal in India and this calculator follows it so the comparison with other tools stays honest, but you should read the output as mildly optimistic by construction. If you want a conservative reading, shave a few tenths off the rate you enter.
Why the inflation-adjusted figure is the one to plan with
₹50 lakh in 2041 is not ₹50 lakh. At 6% inflation, prices roughly double every twelve years, so that corpus buys what about ₹21 lakh buys today. The difference is not a rounding error; it is more than half the headline. This is the figure most AMC calculators leave out, and leaving it out is what allows a projection to look like a solved problem when it is not.
The practical consequence is that goals should be sized in today's money and then inflated, or the corpus deflated — never compared directly. A ₹40 lakh education bill fifteen years away is not a ₹40 lakh target. Set the inflation input to something you can defend, and treat the today's-money row as the real answer. One blended rate also assumes every bill in your life moves at the same pace, which a specific bill need not do — a school's fee schedule or a hospital's tariff is set by that institution, not by an aggregate index. For a goal of that kind, run the projection again at a higher inflation figure and see whether the plan still stands.
What rupee-cost averaging actually does
Because your instalment is a fixed rupee amount, it buys more units when the NAV is low and fewer when it is high. Your average cost per unit therefore comes out below the average NAV over the period. This is real, and it is more useful the more the market moves about.
It is also frequently oversold. Rupee-cost averaging is a defence against buying everything at one unlucky price; it is not a source of return and it does not make a falling market profitable. In a market that rises steadily, investing a lump sum at the start would have beaten the SIP — the averaging cost you money. Its real value is behavioural: it converts an unanswerable question (when should I buy?) into a standing instruction. The one way to forfeit that benefit entirely is to suspend the SIP when markets drop, because that cancels precisely the instalments that would have bought units cheaply.
A projection is arithmetic, not a forecast
The number above tells you what happens if a fixed return arrives every month without fail. No equity fund has ever done that. Real returns arrive in bursts separated by long flat or negative stretches, and the order in which they arrive changes the outcome even when the average is identical — a poor final five years hurts far more than a poor first five, because by then the corpus is large.
Two consequences follow. First, the smooth curve makes the last few years look dependable when they are the most exposed; money needed within about three years does not belong in an equity SIP at all. Second, the sensible use of this tool is comparative rather than predictive. It is reliable for questions like "how much does an extra ₹2,000 a month change things?" or "what does starting five years earlier do?" — both of which it answers exactly. It is not reliable as a statement about 2041.
Tax, and why no percentage appears here
Redemptions from mutual funds are taxed as capital gains, and the treatment depends on whether the scheme is equity-oriented or not, and on how long each unit was held. A SIP complicates this more than a lump sum does: every instalment is a separate purchase with its own holding period, so one redemption from a long-running SIP typically produces a mixture of short-term and long-term gains, with units released first-in-first-out. Exit loads may also apply to the more recent instalments.
Capital gains rates and holding-period thresholds are not part of this site's sourced rate data, so no percentage is quoted here — an out-of-date tax figure on a page like this is worse than none. Check the current position on the Income Tax Department portal, or with your adviser, before you redeem.
What this calculator cannot tell you
- Whether the return you entered is realistic. It has no view on your scheme, the market, or the next fifteen years. It compounds the number you gave it.
- What your fund charges. Expense ratio, exit load and stamp duty on purchases all reduce the return actually credited to you. Enter a post-cost figure.
- What you will keep after tax. The corpus shown is pre-tax, and the tax depends on scheme type, holding periods and rules that change.
- Sequence risk. Two funds with the same average return and very different paths produce very different corpora. Only the average is modelled here.
- Whether you will keep paying. The projection assumes every instalment lands. Missed months and pauses compound away just as reliably as contributions compound up.
Common questions
Why does my fund house or app show a slightly different figure?
Almost every Indian calculator — AMFI's own, Groww, Zerodha Coin, an AMC website — uses the same formula this page uses: the annual rate divided by twelve, with the instalment treated as paid at the start of the month. So the numbers normally agree to within a few hundred rupees on a fifteen-year projection. Where they diverge, it is usually because one tool assumes the instalment is paid at the end of the month, which drops the answer by exactly one month's return, or because it rounds the tenure to a different number of instalments.
What expected return should I actually enter?
There is no correct answer, which is the honest reply. What you can do is bracket it. Run the projection three times — a pessimistic rate, a middling one and an optimistic one — and look at the spread rather than the middle figure. If your goal only works at the optimistic rate, the plan is fragile and the fix is a larger instalment or a longer horizon, not a more cheerful assumption. For debt-oriented funds the plausible band is much narrower and much lower than for equity.
Does a SIP protect me from losing money?
No. A SIP is a payment schedule, not an asset class and not a hedge. The money still buys units of a scheme whose value moves with the market, and a portfolio can be worth less than the sum of the instalments for years at a stretch — that is normal behaviour for equity, not a malfunction. What a SIP does is remove the decision of when to buy, which is the decision most investors get wrong. It does not remove market risk.
Should I stop my SIP when the market falls?
Stopping during a fall is the one action that reliably converts rupee-cost averaging from a mild advantage into a disadvantage, because it cancels exactly the instalments that buy units cheaply. The defensible reasons to pause are personal, not market-related: you have lost income, you need the money within a year, or the instalment was always larger than your cash flow could sustain. Reduce the amount rather than stopping altogether if you can.
How will the corpus be taxed when I redeem it?
Every instalment is treated as a separate purchase with its own holding period, so redeeming a long-running SIP produces a mix of short-term and long-term gains from one transaction, unitised on a first-in-first-out basis. Equity-oriented schemes and other schemes are taxed under different rules, and the qualifying holding periods differ between them. Capital gains rates are not carried in this site's sourced rate data, so check the current position on the Income Tax Department portal or with your tax adviser before you plan a redemption.
Sources
Rates and rules on this page were read directly from the following sources on the dates shown. Figures change — if you are about to act on one, confirm it at the source.