Free · No account required
Free S&P 500 and index fund calculators
Project what a lump sum or a monthly plan could become, with dividends, inflation and 98 years of real S&P 500 history.
WealthSim for iPhone
Take your projections with you
Now with My plan, free with no account, and 100 futures from real market years in Pro.
Launch offer until November 15: Pro for the price of one month the first year.
Which calculator fits your question
The S&P 500 with dividends reinvested returned 10.0% a year on average from 1928 to 2025, before inflation. That is 98 years of annual data from Aswath Damodaran at NYU Stern, retrieved 2026-09-27. It is a long-run average, not a forecast: single decades ran well above and well below it.
Source: Damodaran, NYU Stern (S&P 500 total return, bonds, gold, T-bills, CPI), 1928–2025.
The calculators below start from that record and let you change the return, fee and inflation assumptions.
S&P 500 calculator. Start here for most questions. Enter a lump sum, a monthly contribution and a time horizon, then see the result with dividends and inflation included.
VOO calculator. Project a Vanguard S&P 500 ETF holding with monthly contributions and compare what the fees of VOO, IVV and SPY cost you over time.
DCA calculator. Replay monthly S&P 500 investing since 1928 and compare dollar cost averaging with putting the same money in as a lump sum.
DRIP calculator. See how reinvesting dividends changes the final balance of a dividend-paying fund.
S&P 500 index fund comparison. Compare FXAIX, VFIAX, SWPPX, VOO, IVV and SPY on expense ratio and minimum investment, and see the dollar gap the fees leave on real returns.
SCHD calculator. Estimate dividend income and growth for SCHD with reinvested dividends, using Schwab’s published yield, fee and payout history.
S&P 500 historical returns. Returns by decade since 1928, with dividends reinvested and inflation deducted.
How to invest in the S&P 500. Which kinds of funds track the index and what each costs.
VOO vs VTI. Vanguard’s S&P 500 ETF against its total-market ETF: fees, holdings and past returns side by side.
Built and maintained by Oscar Gallego Ruiz. Methodology and sources. WealthSim is an educational tool and not financial advice. Projections use past data and the assumptions you set, so treat them as scenarios rather than predictions.