Dollar Cost Averaging Calculator

About this calculator

Dollar cost averaging (DCA) means investing a fixed amount at regular intervals regardless of price, which automatically buys more shares when prices are low and fewer when prices are high — over time this smooths out the average price paid compared to trying to time a single lump-sum entry. Total shares accumulated is the sum of (amount invested each period / price that period), and current value is simply total shares × the latest price.

Retail investors use DCA specifically to remove the emotional guesswork of market timing — putting a fixed amount into an index fund every payday, for example — and when evaluating an existing plan they'll want to see total invested, shares accumulated, current value and the resulting return (ROI) side by side, since a plan can show strong percentage gains even if a few individual purchases were made at high prices.

This calculator takes your per-period investment amount, number of periods and the price at each period, and returns your total shares, invested amount, current value and return.