ROI Calculator
A free return on investment calculator with two modes: simple ROI from what you put in and got back, and marketing ROI with ad spend, ROAS and break-even revenue. Add a time period to see annualized ROI, live as you type.
Enter how many months the investment or campaign ran and the annualized ROI tile appears: the same return compounded to a comparable yearly rate. The $ sign is just a label, the math works in any currency.
All math runs in your browser, nothing you type leaves the page.
The ROI formula, with a worked campaign example
Return on investment is profit measured against what it cost to earn it. The same ROI formula covers a stock, a rental property or an ad campaign, only the labels change:
ROI % = (Amount returned - Amount invested) / Amount invested x 100 Marketing ROI % = (Revenue - (Ad spend + Other costs)) / (Ad spend + Other costs) x 100 ROAS = Revenue / Ad spend Annualized ROI % = ((1 + ROI / 100) ^ (12 / months) - 1) x 100 Here is one campaign taken through every line of the math, the same defaults loaded into the marketing ROI mode above:
| Line | Amount | How it is calculated |
|---|---|---|
| Ad spend | $2,000 | Media cost paid to the ad platform |
| Other campaign costs | $500 | Creative, tools, landing pages, agency fees |
| Total cost | $2,500 | 2,000 + 500 |
| Revenue attributed | $7,500 | Tracked conversions from the campaign |
| Net profit | $5,000 | 7,500 - 2,500 |
| ROAS | 3.75x | 7,500 / 2,000, ignores the $500 of other costs |
| Marketing ROI | 200% | 5,000 / 2,500 x 100, counts every cost |
Notice the gap between the last two rows. ROAS says every ad dollar brought back $3.75 of revenue, a gross multiple that never sees the $500 of other costs or what the products cost to deliver. ROI says every dollar of total cost came back as $3, of which $2 is profit. Two campaigns can share an identical ROAS and land on very different campaign ROI once their other costs differ, which is why judging campaigns on ROAS alone quietly rewards the ones with the most hidden overhead.
Why marketing ROI numbers lie when bots are in the data
Every marketing ROI calculation trusts two inputs: what you spent and what came back. Bot traffic corrupts both. Bots clicking paid ads burn real budget with zero chance of revenue, dragging true campaign ROI below what any dashboard admits. At the same time, inflated visit and click counts make campaigns look bigger than they are, fill retargeting pools with non-humans you then pay to reach again, and hand attribution models junk sessions to assign revenue to. The ROI formula is doing its job, it is just being fed fiction.
The fix is measuring on clean numbers. DevDome Analytics separates humans from bots on every metric, visits, clicks and conversions alike, so the traffic behind your campaign ROI reflects real people on your own site, with no sampling.
ROI calculator FAQ
What is the ROI formula?
ROI = (Amount returned - Amount invested) / Amount invested x 100. Invest $1,000, get back $1,500, and the return on investment is ($1,500 - $1,000) / $1,000 x 100 = 50%. This ROI calculator runs the same formula live. For a marketing campaign the amount invested becomes ad spend plus other campaign costs, and the amount returned becomes the revenue attributed to the campaign.
How do I calculate marketing ROI?
Add up every campaign cost, not just ad spend: creative, tools, landing pages, agency fees. Then Marketing ROI = (Attributed revenue - Total cost) / Total cost x 100. A campaign with $2,000 of ad spend, $500 of other costs and $7,500 of attributed revenue earns a 200% marketing ROI: $5,000 of profit on $2,500 of cost. The marketing ROI mode above runs that math live and adds ROAS and break-even revenue.
What is the difference between ROI and ROAS?
ROAS is revenue divided by ad spend: a gross multiple that ignores every cost except the media bill. ROI is net profit divided by all costs. A campaign can post a 3x ROAS and still lose money once product costs, fees and agency retainers are counted, which is why ad platforms report ROAS and finance teams ask for ROI. This calculator shows both numbers side by side for the same campaign.
What is a good ROI for a marketing campaign?
A common benchmark is a 5:1 revenue to cost ratio, which is a 400% campaign ROI, with 10:1 exceptional and 2:1 (100% ROI) close to break-even for businesses with real product costs. The right target depends on your margins: a retailer keeping 30% of each revenue dollar needs a much higher campaign ROI than a software business keeping 80%.
How do I calculate annualized ROI?
Annualized ROI = ((1 + ROI / 100) ^ (12 / months) - 1) x 100. It compounds the return of a shorter or longer period into a comparable yearly rate: a 20% ROI earned in 3 months annualizes to about 107%, while the same 20% spread over 24 months is only about 9.5% per year. Enter a time period in the calculator above and the annualized ROI tile appears automatically.
Can ROI be negative?
Yes. Whenever the amount returned is smaller than the amount invested, ROI goes negative, down to a floor of -100% when the return is zero and the whole investment is lost. The calculator shows negative results in red, and the sensitivity row shows what happens to campaign ROI if revenue comes in 10% lower or higher, so you can see how close the numbers sit to break-even.
Why is my reported campaign ROI higher than my actual results?
Ad platforms grade their own homework. View-through attribution, conversions double-counted across channels, and bot clicks all inflate the revenue side of campaign ROI while the cost side stays real. Compute ROI from platform-neutral revenue numbers, and measure traffic with analytics that separates humans from bots, so the clicks and sessions behind the ROI math belong to real people.
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