DRIP (Dividend Reinvestment Plan) Calculator

DRIP Calculator iDividend Reinvestment Plan. Each dividend automatically buys more shares of the same stock instead of paying out as cash.

Load from a stock ticker iType a stock ticker (like AAPL) and we'll fill in today's price, dividend, and 5-year dividend growth from public market data. You can edit any value after. — Prices and dividends come from the same public feed used across YieldChampion. Quotes refresh on each fetch; growth rates use trailing 5-year history. — Clicking Refresh re-fetches the latest values and overwrites all autofilled fields. Anything you typed manually after autofilling will be replaced.

Final shares iTotal shares you'd own at the end, after every dividend has been reinvested. Includes fractional shares.: -
Final value iFinal shares times the projected share price at the end of the period. Note: this assumes the share price stays flat unless your inputs say otherwise.: -
Total dividends collected iCumulative dollar value of every dividend paid over the projection - all of which were reinvested rather than taken as cash.: -
Methodology & full breakdown

Formula

Per period: div_period_t = div_period_0 · ∏(1 + cagr_decayed(k)); price_t = price_0 · (1 + (target_total_return - current_yield)/periods_per_year)^t; shares_{t+1} = shares_t + (shares_t · div_period_t) / price_t.

Inputs & sources

Starting shares
Manual entry.
Share price
Manual entry, or autofilled from /api/quote when a ticker is loaded.
Dividend per payment
Manual entry, or autofilled with the annual dividend from /api/quote (frequency forced to Annual to keep the per-payment math consistent).
5-year dividend CAGR
Manual entry, or autofilled from /api/dividends (cached 7 days). On a fetch failure your manual value is preserved.
Years
Manual entry.

Modeling assumptions

  • Capital appreciation = 8% target total return minus the current yield.
  • Dividend CAGR decays linearly toward the long-run market average (~6%) across years 6-15.
  • Reinvestment is intra-period at the new price (no commissions, no taxes, no fractional-share friction).

Limitations

  • No taxes, no fees, no dividend cuts, no spinoffs/special dividends, no FX.
  • Final value is nominal (not inflation-adjusted).
How It Works - How does the DRIP calculator work?

A Dividend Reinvestment Plan, or DRIP, automatically buys more shares of a stock each time it pays a dividend, instead of giving you the cash. Over decades, this turns a static income stream into a snowballing one - more shares pay more dividends next quarter, which buy more shares, and so on.

This calculator projects what happens to a position you start today. Inputs are: the current share count, the share price, the per-payment dividend, the payment frequency (monthly, quarterly, semi-annual, annual), the most recent five-year dividend growth rate (CAGR), and the number of years to project. Internally we use two assumptions you can override: capital appreciation defaults to 8% total return minus the current yield (so a 4%-yielder is assumed to grow its share price at 4% per year), and the dividend growth rate decays from your input toward the long-run market average over years 6 through 15.

Each payment, the model: (1) grows the per-share dividend by the appropriate decayed CAGR; (2) grows the share price by the per-period appreciation; (3) computes the cash dividend = current shares * current per-share dividend; (4) buys fractional shares at the new price; (5) rolls forward.

The output has three numbers. Final shares is your share count after all reinvestment. Final value is shares * projected price. Total dividends is the cumulative cash that flowed through the reinvestment - useful as a sanity check. The relationship final value = final shares * projected price always holds, but the dividend total is reinvested, not pocketed; you do not get to keep both.

Caveats: dividend cuts can and do happen. Companies in distress sometimes cut dividends entirely. Total returns may be negative for long periods. The decay model we use prevents cartoonish results (no stock grows its dividend at 25% per year for 30 years), but you should always pair the projection with a "what if the dividend is cut to zero in year 10" sensitivity check.

Not financial advice. For informational and educational purposes only. Numbers come from public market data and may be stale. Always consult a licensed financial advisor before making investment decisions.