DCA calculator
Dollar-cost averagingDollar-cost averagingBuying a fixed amount of money’s worth on a fixed schedule — say $200 on the first of every month — instead of trying to pick the moment. You automatically buy more coins when the price is low and fewer when it is high.Full entry in the glossary → is buying a fixed amount on a fixed schedule and ignoring the price. This runs that plan over every daily close we hold and puts it next to the alternative everyone argues about: one lump sumLump sumPutting the whole amount in at once, on one date, instead of spreading it over months. It is the comparison every discussion of scheduled buying eventually turns into.Full entry in the glossary → on the start date.
Regular buying
The two totals above are not comparable as rates, which is why the annualised pair is there. A lump sum has the whole amount working for the whole period, so its rate is a CAGRCAGRThe single yearly rate that would take a starting amount to an ending amount over the period, compounding along the way. It answers “what yearly pace was this?” for money that sat in one place the whole time.Full entry in the glossary →. With regular buying the average dollar is invested for about half the period, so the same profit is earned by less money-time — the honest counterpart is a money-weighted IRRIRRThe yearly rate that makes a series of payments in and out add up to zero once each is discounted for how long it was invested. It is the right rate for money that went in a bit at a time.Full entry in the glossary →.
On one start date the question has no answer: it flips with the date. Across every 1,095-day window in our history — the same length as yours — the lump sum finished ahead in 77.8% of 4,362 start dates. Windows overlap heavily, so treat that as a description of one price history, not a probability.
What if I had bought
Value of the DCA position over time · USD
The chart needs JavaScript. The numbers above do not — they are computed on the server.
What this does not account for
Exchange fees, spreads and taxes are all ignored, and buys are settled at the daily close rather than at the moment you would have pressed the button. Fees are the big one: a retail purchase typically costs in the region of 0.1–1.5% on an exchange's professional order bookOrder bookThe live list of everyone’s offers to buy and sell on an exchange, matched by price. Buying through it is usually far cheaper than a one-tap “buy now” button, which hides its margin in the price.Full entry in the glossary →, and 2–4% in the simplified “buy now” flows, where an undisclosed spreadSpreadThe gap between the price you can buy at and the price you can sell at. On simplified “buy now” flows it is often wider than the stated fee and is not shown separately, so it is easy to pay several percent without noticing.Full entry in the glossary → sits on top of the visible fee. Check the published rates for your own venue. Past behaviour of an asset is a description of the past, not a plan for the future — read what this site refuses to do.