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Crypto Dollar Cost Averaging (DCA) Calculator

How many coins would my DCA plan buy?

How it is calculated

The tool simulates a fixed-dollar buying plan. You enter the amount per buy, the number of buys, the price at the first buy and the price at the last buy. The price is assumed to move in a straight line between those two points, so buy i (starting at 0) happens at p_i = start + (end − start) × i ÷ (buys − 1). Coins bought each time are amount ÷ p_i, and they are added up. Then invested = amount × buys, average cost = invested ÷ total coins, value = coins × end price, profit = value − invested and ROI = profit ÷ invested × 100. The number of buys is rounded to a whole number and must be between 1 and 2,000. Real prices zigzag, so a straight-line path is a simplification, and fees and taxes are not included.

Worked example

You buy $100 of a coin 12 times, and the price climbs from $40,000 at the first buy to $60,000 at the last. The twelve buys add up to 0.024389 coins. You invested 100 × 12 = $1,200.00. Your average cost is 1,200 ÷ 0.024389 = $49,202.16, lower than the simple average of the two end prices, $50,000, because cheaper buys gave you more coins. The coins are worth 0.024389 × 60,000 = $1,463.35 at the end price, a profit of $263.35, or an ROI of 21.95 %.

Try this example →

Common mistakes

  • Treating the number of buys as the number of months of price history. The tool takes only a start price and an end price, so it cannot reproduce a real chart with ups and downs.
  • Entering the total budget in the amount field. The amount is what you spend on each buy; 1,200 spread over 12 buys is entered as 100.
  • Mixing up the start and end prices. The first price is the price at your first buy, not today's price, and the last is the price at the final buy and the price used to value the coins.
  • Expecting the average cost to equal the average price. The average cost is a weighted figure and is lower when the price rises over the period, since fixed dollars buy more coins when the coin is cheap.
  • Forgetting fees and taxes. Exchange fees on each of many small buys, and taxes on gains, lower the real return.

Sources

About this calculator

Dollar-cost averaging means investing a fixed amount of money at regular intervals — weekly or monthly, for example — regardless of price, rather than trying to time a single lump-sum entry point. Because the fixed dollar amount buys more coins when price is low and fewer coins when price is high, the resulting average cost basis is automatically weighted toward periods of lower price, which is why DCA is a common strategy for volatile assets like crypto where timing a single ideal entry is unreliable.

Crypto investors use DCA specifically to reduce the behavioral and timing risk of investing a large sum right before a downturn, trading away the chance of buying entirely at the bottom in exchange for a smoother, less regret-prone average entry price — the tradeoff being that DCA typically underperforms a lump-sum investment in a market that trends steadily upward over the period, since money held back for later purchases could have been invested (and compounding) sooner.

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