Total investment
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Investment breakdown
Share of your total contributions versus net returns at maturity.
Investment vs growth
See how your SIP contributions compound into corpus over time.
| Year | Investment | Interest | Expenses | Corpus |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Run a calculation to see the yearly schedule. | ||||
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SIP Calculator
Plan regular mutual fund SIPs with charts and yearly breakdown.
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Step-up SIP Calculator
Model SIPs that increase by a fixed % every year.
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SIP Inflation Calculator
View SIP corpus in today’s rupees after inflation.
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Lumpsum Expense Ratio Calculator
Compare lumpsum growth before and after expense ratio.
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What a fund's fee actually costs you
Expense ratio is quoted as a fraction of a percent and sounds like rounding error. It is not. The fee is charged on your entire balance every year, so it grows as the corpus grows, and the money it takes never gets the chance to compound. Over a twenty-year SIP, a one-percentage-point difference in fees routinely costs more than a year's worth of contributions.
How the calculation works
The fee is subtracted from your expected return — 12% gross less a 0.5% expense ratio gives 11.5% net — and your contributions are compounded at both rates. Expense paid is the gap between the two maturity values: what the corpus would have been, minus what it is.
Direct plans versus regular plans
The same fund is usually sold in two versions. A regular plan builds in distributor commission, typically running 0.5% to 1% a year higher than the direct plan of the identical portfolio. Enter both figures in turn and the difference is the price of buying through an intermediary — worth paying for genuine advice, harder to justify for order placement alone.
For a one-time investment, use the lumpsum expense ratio calculator. For a projection before fees, use the core SIP calculator. Our guide on how expense ratio affects returns works through the arithmetic with examples.
FAQ
SIP expense ratio FAQs
What is an expense ratio?
It is the annual charge a mutual fund levies for running the scheme, expressed as a percentage of the assets it manages. It covers fund management, administration, and distribution costs, and it is deducted from the fund NAV rather than billed to you, which is why it is easy to overlook.
How does the fee affect my returns?
The fee comes off your return before compounding, so a 12% gross return with a 0.5% expense ratio compounds at 11.5%. The damage grows with tenure because the money taken each year would otherwise have earned returns of its own.
What counts as a reasonable expense ratio?
Index funds and ETFs typically sit well under 0.5%, actively managed equity funds considerably higher, and direct plans always below the regular plan of the same fund. Judge it against comparable funds rather than against an absolute threshold.
Is a cheaper fund always the better choice?
Not automatically, but the fee is one of the few things you know in advance, while future outperformance is a hope. A fund charging 1% more has to beat its cheaper rival by more than 1% every year, consistently, just to draw level.
Where do I model step-up contributions or inflation?
On their own pages — the step-up SIP calculator for rising contributions, and the SIP inflation calculator for purchasing power. This page deliberately isolates the fee so its effect is not tangled up with anything else.