Dividend Yield Calculator
Current / trailing yield: —
Dividend & holding details
Compute the yields and income from your holding, or work backwards to a target price, dividend, share count, income or yield on cost.
Share price needed
Advanced — growth, tax & inflation
Enter a current share price above zero to calculate a yield.
Yield comparison
Current, forward, on-cost and after-tax yields side by side.
Growth scenarios
Total income over the horizon at lower, base and higher dividend growth.
- Lower growth$0
- Base growth$0
- Higher growth$0
Payment calendar
When dividends land across the year (quarterly).
| Month | Status | Payment |
|---|---|---|
| Month 1 | — | — |
| Month 2 | — | — |
| Month 3 | Payment | $0 |
| Month 4 | — | — |
| Month 5 | — | — |
| Month 6 | Payment | $0 |
| Month 7 | — | — |
| Month 8 | — | — |
| Month 9 | Payment | $0 |
| Month 10 | — | — |
| Month 11 | — | — |
| Month 12 | Payment | $0 |
Yield measures
| Current / trailing yieldAnnual dividend ÷ current price. | 0.00% |
|---|---|
| Forward yieldNext year's dividend ÷ current price. | 0.00% |
| Yield on costAnnual dividend ÷ your purchase price. | 0.00% |
| Forward yield on cost | 0.00% |
| After-tax yield | 0.00% |
Income & position breakdown
| Annual income | $0 |
|---|---|
| Forward annual income | $0 |
| Monthly income | $0 |
| Per paymentQuarterly | $0 |
| After-tax income | $0 |
| Tax per year | $0 |
| Total cost basis | $0 |
| Current value | $0 |
| Capital gain / loss | $0 |
Growth scenario comparison
Forward income, lifetime income and final yield on cost by growth rate.
| Scenario | Growth | Forward income | Total income | Final yield on cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lower growth | -3.0% | $0 | $0 | 0.00% |
| Base growth | 0.0% | $0 | $0 | 0.00% |
| Higher growth | 3.0% | $0 | $0 | 0.00% |
Inputs & outputs
| Inputs | |
|---|---|
| Current share price | $0 |
| Annual dividend per share | $0 |
| Shares owned | 0 |
| Purchase price per share | $0 |
| Annual dividend growth | 0.0% |
| Payment frequency | Quarterly |
| Results | |
| Current / trailing yield | 0.00% |
| Yield on cost | 0.00% |
| Annual income | $0 |
| After-tax income | $0 |
The formulas
Every figure on this page comes from a handful of simple ratios.
Yield = Dividend ÷ PriceForward yield = Dividend × (1 + growth) ÷ PriceYield on cost = Dividend ÷ Purchase priceAnnual income = Dividend × SharesAfter-tax income = Income × (1 − tax)Real income (year t) = Income ÷ (1 + inflation)^tKey terms
Assumptions & limits
Read the results as estimates for planning, not investment advice.
- Dividends are not reinvested — share count stays fixed (use a DRIP calculator for compounding).
- The share price is held constant in the projection; only the dividend grows.
- The entered dividend is the trailing annual figure; growth moves the forward numbers.
- One flat dividend-tax rate is applied; qualified and ordinary rates can differ.
- Dividend growth is assumed steady; real payouts can be raised, frozen or cut.
Know what this estimate is based on
- Jurisdiction
- No statute sets these results — they are return, fee and time-value arithmetic that holds in any market. Tools in this category that do turn on U.S. tax law or a contribution limit say so on their own page.
- Scope and limitations
- Scenario model, not a forecast. Returns, volatility, inflation, fees and taxes are assumptions you supply, and actual investment outcomes can be lower or negative. Past performance does not carry forward, and no allocation shown here is a recommendation.
- Source links checked
- Sep 19, 2026
Built and regression-tested by Smart Tools Lab. It has not been individually reviewed by a licensed financial, tax, or legal professional.
Primary sources
- Understanding fees and what they cost over timeU.S. Securities and Exchange Commission — Investor.gov
- Beginners' guide to asset allocation, diversification and rebalancingU.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
- Investor.gov's own calculators — cross-check a result hereU.S. Securities and Exchange Commission — Investor.gov
How to use
- 01
Enter the four core inputs: today's share price ($50 in the example), the trailing-twelve-month dividend per share ($2.00), how many shares you hold (100), and the price you originally paid ($40).
- 02
Pick how often the dividend lands — quarterly in the default — so the tool can split the yearly payout into a per-payment amount and a payment calendar.
- 03
Optionally layer on the forward-looking assumptions: an annual dividend growth rate (5%), your dividend tax rate (15%), expected inflation (2.5%) and a projection horizon (20 years).
- 04
Read the headline current yield (4.00%), the yield on cost (5.00%), the forward and after-tax yields, and your annual and monthly income, then switch to the solve modes to back into a target income or a target entry price.
Formula
Dividend yield is calculated as the annual dividend per share divided by the current share price, multiplied by 100 to express it as a percentage; if the price is zero, the yield is reported as zero. The calculator also multiplies the per-share dividend by your number of shares to get annual income, divides that annual income by 12 for an average monthly income, and multiplies the share price by your number of shares to get the total invested. The yield percentage depends only on price and the per-share dividend, while the dollar figures scale with your share count.
Example
Suppose a stock trades at a share price of $50, pays an annual dividend of $2.00 per share, and you own 100 shares. Step 1, calculate the dividend yield: $2.00 divided by $50 equals 0.04, and multiplying by 100 gives a yield of 4%. Step 2, calculate the total invested: $50 times 100 shares equals $5,000. Step 3, calculate the annual income: $2.00 per share times 100 shares equals $200 per year. Step 4, calculate the average monthly income: $200 divided by 12 equals about $16.67 per month. So this position yields 4%, represents $5,000 invested, and produces $200 a year or roughly $16.67 a month in dividends. Notice that if you had entered 200 shares instead, the yield would still be 4%, but the total invested would rise to $10,000, the annual income to $400, and the monthly income to about $33.33 — the percentage is unchanged while every dollar figure doubles.
Definitions
- Share price
- The price of a single share that you enter, used as the denominator of the yield and, when multiplied by your share count, as the basis for total invested.
- Annual dividend per share
- The total dividend a single share pays over a full year, entered directly, which drives both the yield percentage and your annual income.
- Number of shares
- How many shares you hold, which scales the dollar outputs (total invested, annual income, and monthly income) but has no effect on the yield percentage.
- Dividend yield
- The headline output, equal to the annual dividend per share divided by the share price times 100, expressing annual dividend income as a percentage of price.
- Total invested
- The market value of your position at the price entered, calculated as share price multiplied by the number of shares.
- Annual income
- The total dividends your position pays over a full year, calculated as the annual dividend per share multiplied by your number of shares.
- Monthly income
- The annual income divided by twelve, giving a level monthly average rather than the actual, usually quarterly, payment schedule.
Good to know
What dividend yield really tells you
Dividend yield compresses a stock's payout into a single rate that tells you, for each dollar invested, how much cash returns to you over a year. It converts a raw dividend into a number you can compare across the whole market, much as an interest rate lets you weigh one savings account against another. In the example scenario a share costs $50 and pays $2.00 of dividends across the year, so the yield is 4.00% — two dollars of income for every fifty invested. That single percentage carries weight for income-focused investors, because it separates the cash a company actually pays from the hope of a higher price later. A stock can deliver a handsome total return through price appreciation alone, but yield is the part you can spend without selling anything, which is why retirees and anyone funding regular expenses watch it closely. It also acts as a sanity check on price: when a share gets expensive relative to its payout the yield shrinks, and when it gets cheap the yield swells, so the number quietly encodes how the market is pricing the income stream. What yield does not reveal is whether the dividend is safe, whether it will grow, or what you will keep after tax — those are separate questions this calculator helps you explore through its growth, tax and inflation settings. Think of the headline yield as the opening of an income analysis rather than its conclusion: it frames how hard your money is working today, and the rest of the tool shows how that figure shifts once you account for the price you paid, the dividend's trajectory, the tax you owe and the slow erosion of inflation. Used that way, a plain 4.00% becomes the anchor for a much richer picture of what a dividend stock will really do for you over the years you hold it.
Turning price and payout into a percentage
The arithmetic behind yield is among the friendliest in finance: take the annual dividend per share and divide it by the price per share. With $2.00 of dividends and a $50 price the sum is 2 ÷ 50 = 0.04, or 4.00%, and nothing about your account size or share count enters into it. The subtlety lies in which dividend and which price you feed the formula. The figure you type as the annual dividend is the trailing-twelve-month payout — the cash already distributed over the past year — so the headline 4.00% is a backward-looking, verifiable fact. Forward yield asks a different question: what will the next year pay? If you expect the dividend to grow 5%, the forward payout rises to $2.10 and, against the unchanged $50 price, the forward yield becomes 4.20%. Trailing yield is solid ground because it reports what happened, while forward yield is a projection that comes true only if the company actually raises its dividend as assumed. Both have their place — trailing yield is what you can prove, forward yield is what you are betting on — and seeing them side by side keeps optimism honest. The choice of price matters just as much as the choice of dividend: dividing by today's market price gives the current yield a new buyer would receive, while dividing by the price you originally paid gives yield on cost, your own personal rate. Because the formula is just a ratio of two per-share figures, it scales effortlessly: a hundred-dollar stock paying four dollars and a ten-dollar stock paying forty cents both yield 4.00%, even though their prices differ tenfold. That comparability is the formula's real gift, letting you stack wildly different companies on one ruler. Master which dividend and which price belong in the numerator and denominator, and every other figure the calculator produces falls neatly into place.
Yield on cost: the quiet reward for holding on
Yield on cost is the number long-term holders cherish, because it measures today's dividend against the price you paid rather than the price the stock trades at now. Buy in at $40 while the dividend is $2.00 and your yield on cost is 5.00%, even though someone purchasing the same share today at $50 secures only 4.00%. The magic is in the denominator: your purchase price is fixed the moment you buy and never changes, so every future dividend increase lands on top of a frozen base. Run the example forward and the effect becomes striking — with the payout growing 5% a year, the dividend per share climbs from $2.00 to roughly $5.31 after twenty years, and because it is still measured against your original $40, your yield on cost swells to about 13.27%. A new buyer two decades from now, facing whatever price the market has set by then, would see nothing like that figure; yield on cost is personal to you and rewards the simple act of having bought early and stayed put. This is the income investor's version of compounding: you are not reinvesting the cash here, but the dividend itself is growing against a stationary cost, so the income rate on your original outlay ratchets steadily upward. It explains why seasoned dividend-growth investors talk about positions that now pay them double-digit yields on cost while looking utterly ordinary to newcomers. It also reframes patience as a strategy rather than merely a virtue — the longer you hold a dividend that keeps rising, the more dramatically your personal yield outruns the market's current yield. The calculator lays both numbers next to each other precisely so you can watch the gap open up across your chosen horizon. Yield on cost is no excuse to overpay or to cling to a deteriorating business, but for a healthy, growing dividend it captures the compounding reward of staying invested.
Annual, monthly and per-payment: cadence versus rate
Payment frequency shapes the rhythm of your dividend income without touching its annual rate, and keeping those two ideas apart prevents a great deal of confusion. The example stock pays quarterly, so its $200 of yearly income arrives as four equal deposits of $50, landing roughly every three months. The calculator also shows a $16.67 monthly figure, but that is simply the annual total divided by twelve to give a smooth number for budgeting — it does not mean a payment shows up every month. If you switched the same stock to monthly distributions, you would receive twelve smaller amounts instead of four larger ones, yet the yield would stay exactly 4.00% because the total cash paid across the year never changed. Frequency, in other words, is about cadence: when and in what size the money arrives, not how much arrives in total. This matters for anyone matching dividend income to recurring bills, since a portfolio of quarterly payers can leave lumpy gaps that monthly payers smooth over, even when the headline yields are identical. The one situation where frequency genuinely affects your return is reinvestment — money paid sooner can be put back to work sooner, so more frequent payments compound a touch faster. This calculator, however, deliberately does not reinvest; each payout is treated as cash you receive and keep, which is why frequency here changes only the schedule and the per-payment amount. That clean separation is intentional: it lets you read yield as a pure annual rate and the income figures as straightforward totals, leaving the compounding-through-reinvestment question to a dedicated DRIP tool. So when you choose quarterly, monthly or annual on the input, you are telling the calculator how to slice the same annual pie into individual servings, not how big the pie itself is. Use the per-payment and monthly figures to plan your cash flow, and trust that the annual yield stands on its own regardless of the cadence you pick.
Dividend growth and the rising-income engine
A dividend that grows is the difference between a static income and a rising one, and this calculator puts that growth engine front and center. The example assumes the payout increases 5% every year, which moves only the forward-looking figures: the trailing dividend you entered stays at $2.00 and anchors the 4.00% headline yield, while next year's expected payout rises to $2.10 and lifts the forward yield to 4.20%. Compounded over time, a modest annual raise turns into a large absolute gain — at 5% a year the per-share dividend roughly doubles every fourteen years, reaching about $5.31 after two decades from its $2.00 start. Because your purchase price stays fixed in the projection, that growing dividend is what drives yield on cost upward, climbing toward 13.27% across the twenty-year horizon. Growth also compounds your total haul: summed over the projection, the gross dividends collected come to roughly $6,944 on the original 100-share position, far more than the flat $200 a year you would pocket if the dividend never moved. The power of dividend growth is that it works quietly in the background and asks nothing of you — no extra capital, no reinvestment, just a company that keeps raising its payout. It is also what lets dividend income keep pace with, and ideally outrun, the rising cost of living, a theme the inflation setting explores further. Of course, growth is an assumption rather than a guarantee; companies cut or freeze dividends in hard times, and a rate that looks reasonable today may not survive twenty unbroken years. That is why the tool keeps trailing yield, an established fact, distinct from the forward and projected figures, which depend entirely on the growth you assume. Treat the growth rate as a lever for testing scenarios — dial it down to see a cautious case, up to see an optimistic one — and watch how sensitively your long-run income and yield on cost respond to even small changes in the pace of increases.
What the taxman keeps: qualified, ordinary and after-tax yield
Tax quietly decides how much of your dividend income you actually get to keep, and the calculator's after-tax figures bring that reality into view. In the United States dividends fall into two camps. Qualified dividends — typically those from U.S. corporations and qualifying foreign firms, held for more than sixty days within the 121-day window centered on the ex-dividend date — enjoy the lower long-term capital-gains tax rates. Ordinary, or non-qualified, dividends are taxed as regular income at your marginal rate, which can be considerably higher. The distinction can change your net return dramatically even when two stocks show identical gross yields, so it is worth knowing which kind you own. This tool does not classify your dividends for you; it applies whatever single rate you enter, 15% in the example. At that rate the gross 4.00% yield becomes an after-tax yield of 4.00% × 0.85 = 3.40%, and the $200 of annual income drops to $170 once $30 of tax is taken out. After-tax yield is the figure that genuinely matters for spending, because you cannot live on income the government has already claimed, and it is the fairest basis for comparing two holdings with different tax treatment. Where you hold the shares matters too: dividends inside a tax-advantaged retirement account may be deferred or escape this annual tax entirely, in which case you might set the rate to zero to model the gross figures. If your dividends are ordinary rather than qualified, raise the rate to your marginal bracket so the after-tax numbers do not flatter the result. The calculator keeps the logic simple on purpose — one rate applied to the income — so you stay in control of the assumption rather than wrestling with a tangle of brackets. The broader lesson is to judge income investments on what survives tax, not on the gross yield that advertisements love to quote, because two stocks promising the same headline can leave very different sums in your hands.
Inflation and the income that actually buys something
Inflation is the silent tax that never appears on a statement, steadily shrinking what each dividend dollar can buy, and the calculator's real-income view makes its bite visible. Nominal income is the headline cash figure — $200 a year in the example — but if prices are rising 2.5% annually, a fixed $200 buys a little less each year. The saving grace for dividend investors is growth: when the payout rises 5% while inflation runs 2.5%, the real growth rate is (1.05 ÷ 1.025) − 1, about 2.44%, so your income is still gaining ground in purchasing-power terms, just more slowly than the nominal number implies. The tool computes this by deflating each future year's income back into today's dollars, leaving the current year untouched because it is already expressed in present money. The result is two stories told side by side: a nominal income that climbs briskly and a real income that climbs more gently, with the gap between them widening the further out you look. This distinction is the difference between feeling richer and actually being richer. A dividend that grows exactly in line with inflation would show flat real income — your cash figure rises every year, yet you can buy no more than before — which is a sobering thing to discover before you lean on that income for decades. For anyone planning a long retirement, real income is the number that counts, because the groceries and bills you pay in year twenty will cost far more than they do today. A nominal yield that looks comfortable can quietly lose to inflation if the dividend stagnates, while even a modest real growth rate compounds into meaningfully greater purchasing power over time. By separating nominal from real, the calculator stops you mistaking a bigger dollar figure for a richer life, and it rewards dividends that grow fast enough to leave inflation behind rather than merely matching it.
When a generous yield is a flashing warning
A high yield is one of the most seductive and most misleading numbers in investing, and understanding why keeps you out of expensive traps. Yield moves inversely with price: hold the dividend steady and let the share price fall, and the yield mechanically rises, because you are dividing the same payout by a smaller number. So when a stock suddenly sports a yield far above its peers and its own history, the usual cause is not unusual generosity but a sinking price — and prices sink for reasons. Often the market is signalling that it expects the dividend to be cut, which means the very figure luring you in may be about to evaporate. This is the classic yield trap: the headline says 9% or 12%, you buy for the income, and within months the company slashes the payout, leaving you with both a smaller dividend and a capital loss. The calculator faithfully computes whatever yield your inputs produce — it holds no opinion on whether the dividend is safe — so the judgment is yours to make. The example's 4.00% is comfortably ordinary for an established payer, the kind of figure that rarely raises alarms. The warning sign is relative: a yield that towers over comparable companies deserves suspicion rather than excitement. A few quick checks help separate a genuine bargain from a trap — look at whether the payout ratio is sustainable, whether earnings cover the dividend, whether the price fell on a passing scare or a permanent decline, and whether management has a record of defending the dividend. Sometimes a high yield really is a mispriced opportunity, but the base rate favors caution. The healthiest way to read yield is as a question rather than an answer: a number well above the norm is asking you to find out what the market knows that you do not. Income you can keep comes from dividends that endure, and durability — not the size of the percentage — is what ultimately protects your capital.
Planning backward: target income and target entry price
Most people meet a yield calculator by entering what they own and reading what it pays, but its reverse solvers let you run the logic the other way — start from a goal and discover what it takes to reach it. Suppose you want a specific annual income from this stock; because income is proportional to the amount invested at a fixed yield, the tool can tell you exactly how many shares and how much capital that target demands at the current 4.00% rate. The example's 100 shares throw off $200 a year, so a $400 goal simply calls for 200 shares and $10,000 invested, and a $2,000 goal scales straight up to 1,000 shares and $50,000. Seeing the capital requirement laid bare is often a useful reality check, because it shows that even a healthy yield needs serious money behind it to generate income you can live on. The solvers also work on price: you can ask what entry price would deliver a particular yield on cost, which helps when you are deciding whether a stock is cheap enough to start a position. If you would settle for nothing less than a 6% yield on cost from a $2.00 dividend, the tool tells you that you would need to buy at roughly $33.33 — a price the market may or may not offer. This backward mode turns the calculator from a reporting tool into a planning tool, letting you set the destination and read off the route. It pairs naturally with the growth and inflation settings: you might solve for the income you need today and then watch the projection show that, thanks to dividend growth outpacing inflation, the same shares deliver meaningfully more in real terms two decades on. Used this way, the reverse solvers answer the questions investors actually ask — how much must I invest, and at what price, to fund the income I want — rather than merely describing a position you have already built. Plan first, then buy, and the numbers stop being a surprise.
What this calculator models, and what it leaves out
A calculator is only as trustworthy as your understanding of what it leaves out, so it is worth being plain about this tool's boundaries. First, it does not reinvest your dividends: every payment is treated as cash you receive and keep, never as new shares that compound. If you want to model the snowball of automatically buying more stock with each payout, that is the job of a dedicated dividend reinvestment, or DRIP, calculator, and mixing the two would muddy the clean yield mathematics this tool is built to show. Second, the multi-year projection holds the share price perfectly constant. That is a deliberate simplification, not a forecast — freezing the price isolates how a growing dividend lifts your income and your yield on cost, which is why yield on cost climbs toward 13.27% over twenty years purely from the dividend rising against your fixed $40 cost. Real share prices wander, delivering capital gains or losses on top of the income, but those belong in other tools so they do not blur the income picture here. Third, the calculator does not check whether the dividend is sustainable. It asks for the payout, not the company's earnings, so it cannot compute a payout ratio or warn you that a dividend is being funded from debt; it assumes whatever figure you enter simply continues and grows at your chosen rate. That makes verifying the dividend's safety your responsibility, using outside information about the business. Finally, the tax treatment is a single flat rate you supply, not a full bracket-by-bracket calculation, and the growth, inflation and tax inputs are all assumptions you control rather than predictions the tool stands behind. None of this makes the figures less useful — it makes them honest. Read the outputs as a clear, well-defined model of dividend income under your stated assumptions, an estimate to inform your thinking rather than financial advice. Know what sits inside the box and what sits outside it, and the calculator becomes a sharp instrument instead of a false promise.
Frequently asked questions
What exactly is dividend yield?
Dividend yield is the cash a stock pays out over a year stated as a percentage of its price. In the example scenario a $50 share that pays $2.00 a year yields 4.00%, found by dividing $2.00 by $50. It captures the income rate you earn from dividends alone, kept separate from any rise or fall in the share price. Because it is a ratio of two per-share numbers, you can line up companies of very different sizes and prices on a single scale.
What is the difference between trailing yield and forward yield?
Trailing yield looks backward, using the dividends already paid over the past twelve months — that is the $2.00 figure you type in, giving the headline 4.00%. Forward yield looks ahead, using the dividend the company is expected to pay over the coming year. Here a 5% growth assumption lifts the per-share payout to $2.10, so the forward yield is 4.20% against the same $50 price. Trailing yield is a fact you can verify, while forward yield is an estimate that only holds if the dividend grows as projected.
What is yield on cost, and why does it climb over time?
Yield on cost measures today's dividend against the price you originally paid rather than the current price. Having bought at $40, your $2.00 dividend is a 5.00% yield on cost even though a fresh buyer at $50 gets only 4.00%. The figure rises whenever the dividend grows, because the denominator — your purchase price — is frozen at $40 for good. After twenty years of 5% growth the per-share dividend reaches about $5.31, pushing yield on cost to roughly 13.27% while the current yield a new buyer sees stays anchored to the prevailing price.
Does paying monthly versus quarterly change my yield?
No. How often a company pays sets the size and timing of each payment, not the yearly rate. The example pays quarterly, so the $200 annual income arrives as four $50 deposits, and the $16.67 monthly figure is simply that annual total spread evenly for budgeting. Switch to monthly payments and you would receive twelve smaller amounts, but the annual yield stays 4.00% because the total paid across the year is unchanged. Frequency only affects your return if you reinvest between payments, which this tool deliberately leaves to a separate DRIP calculator.
Is a higher yield always better, and what is a yield trap?
Not at all. Yield rises automatically when the price falls, so a number that towers over a stock's peers is often a warning rather than a bargain. If the market has marked shares down on fears the payout will be cut, the headline yield can look generous right before the dividend is slashed — the classic yield trap. The example's 4.00% is comfortably ordinary for an established payer, whereas an unusually high figure should prompt you to investigate why the price dropped. Treat a fat yield as a question to answer, not as free income to grab.
How are qualified and ordinary dividends taxed differently?
In the United States, qualified dividends are taxed at the lower long-term capital-gains rates, while ordinary (non-qualified) dividends are taxed as regular income at your marginal rate. To qualify, the payout generally must come from a U.S. or qualifying foreign corporation and you must hold the shares for more than sixty days within the 121-day window centered on the ex-dividend date. The calculator does not decide which category applies; it takes whatever single tax rate you enter — 15% in the example — and applies it to the income. If your dividends are ordinary, enter your higher marginal rate so the after-tax figures stay honest.