SIP calculator
What does this monthly SIP become, and how much of it is returns?
Annual, before tax. Equity funds have done ~12% over long periods — that is history, not a promise.
0 keeps the instalment flat. Raising it with your income is what actually moves the corpus.
₹1,26,14,400after 15 years
- You put in
- ₹45,00,000
- Returns
- ₹81,14,400
- Absolute return
- 180.3%
Returns are assumed, not guaranteed. Exit load and capital-gains tax are not deducted.
- Invested
- Returns
| Year | Invested | Returns | Value |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | ₹3,00,000 | ₹20,233 | ₹3,20,233 |
| 2 | ₹6,00,000 | ₹81,080 | ₹6,81,080 |
| 3 | ₹9,00,000 | ₹1,87,691 | ₹10,87,691 |
| 4 | ₹12,00,000 | ₹3,45,871 | ₹15,45,871 |
| 5 | ₹15,00,000 | ₹5,62,159 | ₹20,62,159 |
| 6 | ₹18,00,000 | ₹8,43,926 | ₹26,43,926 |
| 7 | ₹21,00,000 | ₹11,99,475 | ₹32,99,475 |
| 8 | ₹24,00,000 | ₹16,38,164 | ₹40,38,164 |
| 9 | ₹27,00,000 | ₹21,70,538 | ₹48,70,538 |
| 10 | ₹30,00,000 | ₹28,08,477 | ₹58,08,477 |
| 11 | ₹33,00,000 | ₹35,65,370 | ₹68,65,370 |
| 12 | ₹36,00,000 | ₹44,56,304 | ₹80,56,304 |
| 13 | ₹39,00,000 | ₹54,98,279 | ₹93,98,279 |
| 14 | ₹42,00,000 | ₹67,10,449 | ₹1,09,10,449 |
| 15 | ₹45,00,000 | ₹81,14,400 | ₹1,26,14,400 |
A SIP is one instalment repeated, and the number that matters is not what you put in but how the two halves end up splitting. Over a long enough run most of the corpus is return, not contribution — and about two-thirds of that return arrives in the last third of the tenure, earned on instalments you paid years earlier.
A worked example
Set the calculator to a monthly instalment of ₹10,000, 20 years, an expected return of 12% and no step-up. It returns ₹99,91,479.
- ₹24,00,000 What you put in — 240 instalments
- ₹75,91,479 Returns — an absolute return of 316.3%
Value at the end: ₹99,91,479. Three-quarters of it is money you never earned at work.
The year-by-year table shows where that split comes from. At the ten-year mark — half the tenure, half the instalments paid — the corpus is ₹23,23,391 against ₹12,00,000 invested. So the first half of the run produced under a quarter of the final figure. The compounding is not evenly spread, and that is the whole argument for starting early rather than investing more later.
Two things move the answer far more than people expect. The first is the rate you assume, which is a guess dressed as an input:
Four percentage points of assumption is ₹40 lakh of answer. Neither number is a forecast.
The second is the step-up. Raise the instalment 10% a year and the same ₹10,000 opening SIP ends at ₹1,98,88,715 — but you also paid in ₹68,73,000 rather than ₹24,00,000, and the final instalment is ₹61,159 a month. It is not free money; it is the calculator showing what a raise is worth if it reaches the SIP instead of the lifestyle.
What this number does not account for
Tax on the way out
The headline is pre-tax. Equity gains above ₹1.25 lakh a year are taxed at 12.5% long-term under section 112A; debt funds are taxed at your slab.
The fund’s own cut
Returns are quoted gross. A scheme’s expense ratio is deducted from NAV daily, and a regular plan carries distributor commission that a direct plan does not.
Exit load and stamp duty
Many equity schemes charge an exit load on units redeemed inside a year — the SID states it. Every purchase, each instalment included, pays 0.005% stamp duty — levied on mutual fund units since 1 July 2020.
Rupees, not purchasing power
A crore in twenty years is not today’s crore. Nothing here is inflation-adjusted, so read the corpus against what it must buy in that year.
Two more, specific to how this is computed. It credits the month’s return to the instalment paid in that month — a start-of-month, annuity-due convention. Calculators that credit from the following month land roughly a percent lower over a long tenure, which is why two honest tools can disagree slightly on the same SIP. And the return is applied as a smooth monthly rate, so no row of the table is what any real year looked like; a market that averages 12% delivers it in lumps, and if you need the money in a particular year, the average is not the risk.
Working this out usually means three calculators, not one. The lumpsum calculator is the fair comparison if the money is already in your hands; the SWP calculator answers the question at the other end — what a monthly withdrawal does to the corpus this page just built; and the ELSS calculator is the same maths with the section 80C deduction and the three-year lock-in attached.
How much do I need to invest every month to reach ₹1 crore?
At 12% a year for 20 years, ₹10,000 a month lands at ₹99,91,479 — a crore, near enough. Shorten the run and the instalment rises steeply: the same 12% over 10 years turns ₹10,000 a month into ₹23,23,391, so reaching a crore in ten years needs roughly four times the monthly amount, not twice. Time does more of the work than the instalment does.
Is a 12% SIP return guaranteed?
No. Nothing about a mutual fund SIP is guaranteed — not the return, not the capital. 12% is the rate people use because diversified Indian equity indices have averaged roughly that over multi-decade periods, but an average is not a schedule: the same 12% average can arrive as three flat years followed by one violent one. Run the calculator at 8% as well and treat the gap between the two answers as the honest range.
Do I pay tax on my SIP returns?
Yes, when you redeem, and every instalment is treated as its own purchase with its own holding period on a first-in-first-out basis. For equity-oriented funds, units held more than 12 months are long-term: since the Finance (No. 2) Act, 2024, section 112A charges 12.5% on long-term equity gains above ₹1.25 lakh in a financial year, and section 111A charges 20% on short-term gains. Debt-oriented funds bought on or after 1 April 2023 are taxed at your slab rate regardless of how long you held them. The figures above are all pre-tax.
Is a SIP better than investing a lump sum?
They answer different questions. A lump sum has more time in the market, so at a constant assumed rate it always wins on paper — which is exactly why comparing them in a calculator flatters the lump sum. A SIP wins on the things the calculator cannot show: it buys more units when prices fall, it needs no view on whether today is a good day, and it matches how a salary actually arrives. If you already hold the money, the honest comparison is against the lumpsum calculator.
What happens if I miss or stop a SIP instalment?
The AMC charges nothing for a missed instalment, though your bank may levy a failed-mandate charge; after a few consecutive failed debits most AMCs cancel the mandate, and the scheme information document says how many. Stopping a SIP is not redeeming — units already bought stay invested and keep compounding. What you lose is the instalments themselves, and because the early instalments are the ones with the most years left to grow, a pause now costs more than the same pause taken later.
This page starts from typical figures. In Hundo the same calculator opens on your own — the loan, the deposit, the salary already on the ledger — and says where each number came from.