Enter your monthly amount, expected return, and how many years you plan to stay invested. See exactly what your SIP is worth at the end.
The point of running this calculation is to see the gap between what you put in and what you get out. On Rs.10,000 per month for 10 years, you invest Rs.12 lakh. At 12% expected return, the calculator shows roughly Rs.23 lakh. That Rs.11 lakh difference is returns doing the heavy lifting. This SIP calculator breaks down exactly how that happens year by year so the compounding effect is visible rather than abstract.
A SIP is an instruction to your bank: take Rs.X from my account on the 5th of every month and invest it in this mutual fund. That instruction runs automatically until you cancel it. The fund buys units at whatever the NAV is on that date. When NAV is low you get more units for the same Rs.X. When NAV is high you get fewer. Over time, this averages your purchase price across different market levels, which is rupee cost averaging in practice. The effect is meaningful: investors who stayed in SIPs through the 2008, 2020, and 2022 market drops accumulated significantly more units at low prices than those who paused or stopped, and those extra units contributed substantially to the eventual recovery gains.
Before deciding on a monthly amount or duration, a few things worth knowing:
SIP uses a future value of annuity formula because each monthly investment compounds for a different number of months:
M = P × ({[1 + i]n – 1} / i) × (1 + i)
What each variable means:
The formula treats every monthly SIP instalment as an independent investment. The first instalment compounds for the full n months. The last instalment earns only one month of return. The total corpus is the sum of all these individually compounded instalments. This is why the same Rs.10,000 per month at 12% grows faster in years 15 to 20 than it did in years 1 to 5: the base being compounded is vastly larger.
A SIP is an instruction to invest a fixed amount in a mutual fund every month automatically. Your bank account gets debited on a set date and the fund purchases units at that day's NAV. The investment runs without any action needed from you. The discipline element is the real value: most people who attempt to invest manually end up doing so inconsistently. A SIP removes the decision from the process entirely. At Rs.5,000 per month at 12% over 15 years, you invest Rs.9 lakh and the corpus grows to approximately Rs.25 lakh. The Rs.16 lakh difference comes from compounding on a monthly investment that kept running regardless of market conditions in any given year.
Safe is the wrong frame for SIP. The correct question is: over what time horizon and in what fund type. An equity SIP in a large-cap or index fund over 10 or more years has not produced negative returns in any 10-year rolling period in Indian mutual fund history. The same SIP over 2 years carries real downside risk because markets go through correction periods that last 1 to 3 years. The mechanism that makes SIP relatively resilient for long horizons is accumulation of units during downturns. When the market drops 30%, your monthly Rs.10,000 buys 43% more units than it did before the drop. Those extra units appreciate fully when markets recover. Debt SIPs are more stable year to year but deliver lower long-term returns of 6 to 8%.
Stopping or pausing a SIP is completely free and takes about 30 seconds on most AMC apps or Zerodha, Groww, or Kuvera. No exit load, no penalty, no loss of existing units. The units you have already accumulated stay in the fund and keep earning returns. The only thing that stops is new monthly purchases. The question to ask before pausing is whether you are pausing because of market timing (which rarely works in your favour) or because of a genuine cash flow need. Pausing because markets are down is statistically the worst time to stop a SIP because those are the months when your money buys the most units.
Most funds in India accept SIPs from Rs.500 per month. Some fund houses like Mirae, Axis, and Parag Parikh have brought minimum SIPs to Rs.100 for specific plans. The right minimum is whatever you will maintain consistently. A Rs.500 SIP that runs for 15 years does more for your wealth than a Rs.5,000 SIP that gets paused every time finances get tight. The principle applies upward too: starting at Rs.5,000 and using the step-up feature to increase by 10% every April, which typically aligns with salary increments, grows the monthly contribution from Rs.5,000 to Rs.21,000 over 15 years without any active decision-making.
No. SIP returns depend on how the underlying mutual fund performs, which depends on the markets those funds invest in. Equity funds have historically delivered 10 to 15% CAGR over 10-year periods in India, but this is an average across many funds and periods. In any specific 3 to 5-year period, a fund might return 5% or it might return 20%. The 12% assumption in this calculator is a reasonable planning number for diversified equity funds over long periods, not a promise. Using 10% gives you a more conservative estimate and the corpus difference over 20 years between 10% and 12% is substantial. Plan conservatively, invest consistently, and treat upside returns as a bonus.
For salaried investors who receive income monthly, SIP is the practical and usually optimal approach. You invest what is available when it is available. Lump sum outperforms SIP when the entire amount is invested at a market low, because more money compounds for longer from a low base. In practice, identifying market lows consistently is not possible, so lump sum investments often end up being made at random points in the market cycle. Historically, across rolling 10-year periods in India, a disciplined SIP and a lump sum invested at the start of the period produce broadly similar outcomes. For people who receive a large one-time inflow such as a bonus, ESOP vesting, or an inheritance, a Systematic Transfer Plan (STP) from a debt fund to equity over 6 to 12 months combines the discipline of SIP with the full amount deployed from day one.
Each SIP instalment is treated as a separate investment for tax purposes, with its own holding period counted from the date that specific instalment was made. This matters because the LTCG threshold for equity funds is 1 year from each purchase date. In a Rs.10,000 monthly SIP running for 3 years, the instalments from months 1 to 24 qualify for LTCG treatment at 12.5% above Rs.1.25 lakh when you redeem at month 36. The instalments from months 25 to 36 qualify for STCG at 20%. The Rs.1.25 lakh annual LTCG exemption applies at the total portfolio level. For debt funds, gains from all SIP instalments are taxed as income from other sources at your applicable slab rate regardless of how long each instalment has been held.
The step-up SIP feature lets you set an automatic annual increase percentage when you set up the SIP. Setting 10% means your SIP moves from Rs.10,000 per month in year 1 to Rs.11,000 in year 2 to Rs.12,100 in year 3. Over 15 years, the monthly contribution reaches approximately Rs.41,000 from the original Rs.10,000. The corpus generated by a step-up SIP at 10% annual increment significantly exceeds a flat SIP at the same starting amount because contributions in the later years, when the compounding base is largest, are meaningfully higher. Aligning the step-up percentage with your expected annual salary increment keeps investments proportionate to income over time.
SIP is where most people should start. The reason is not that it is the highest-performing strategy. It is that it works consistently without requiring skill or timing. A 22-year-old who starts Rs.3,000 per month in a Nifty 50 index fund and increases it 10% every year will have invested less than Rs.1 crore over 30 years and accumulated a corpus between Rs.5 crore and Rs.8 crore depending on market returns. A 35-year-old who waits until they understand investing better before starting leaves 13 years of compounding on the table. Start with an index fund or a large-cap fund, set the SIP to auto-debit three days after salary credit, and let it run.
The answer depends entirely on what goal the SIP is building toward. For retirement at 60 for someone currently 30 years old, 30 years is the right duration. For a child's education in 15 years, 15 years is the answer. The one universal principle: do not break the SIP in year 8 of a 10-year plan because the market is down. The final two years of a compounding SIP often add more to the corpus than the first four years combined because they compound on the accumulated base of all earlier years. Withdrawing or stopping in the final years to avoid short-term volatility is the single most wealth-destructive decision most SIP investors make.
Missing one instalment has no penalty and no lasting consequence. The AMC simply does not purchase units that month and the SIP resumes normally the following month. Missing two or three consecutive instalments due to insufficient funds typically causes the AMC to send a deactivation notice, and after a few more consecutive misses the SIP is cancelled. The units already accumulated remain fully intact and keep earning returns. You restart the SIP through your AMC app or platform at any time. The practical prevention: schedule your SIP debit for two to three days after your salary credit date, not the day of salary credit. This gives the salary time to fully clear before the debit hits.
