Bitcoin DCA Calculator
Test a regular Bitcoin buy against real price history.
See what steady weekly buys of Bitcoin would be worth today, using real market history rather than vibes.
Dollar-cost averaging means buying a fixed amount on a set schedule, whatever the price is that day. This tool runs that plan against real Bitcoin market history and shows you what it would be worth.
How it works
Pick an amount
Whatever you’d put in each time. $10 a week counts.
Set your schedule
Daily, weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly, across any date range you pick.
See your results
The Bitcoin you’d be holding today, and what it would be worth.
Pick an amount
Whatever you’d put in each time. $10 a week counts.
Set your schedule
Daily, weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly, across any date range you pick.
See your results
The Bitcoin you’d be holding today, and what it would be worth.
A free, open-source calculator for long-term Bitcoin thinkers. No accounts, no email capture, no shitcoins. Learn more →
Why DCA Works
Dollar cost averaging, or DCA, means buying a fixed amount on a schedule, whatever the price is that day. It suits jumpy assets like Bitcoin because it takes the timing decision, and most of the second-guessing, off your plate. New to the asset itself? Start with where Bitcoin's value comes from.
Time in the Market > Timing the Market
Almost nobody buys the exact bottom, and the people who did it once rarely do it twice. Buying on a schedule catches the lows along with the highs. What you pay works out as an average across all of those days: never the best price of the stretch, and never the worst.
The Psychology
A falling price is exactly when most people sell. If your buy is already scheduled, the same drop just hands you more sats for the same money.
“I am very intrigued by Bitcoin. It has all the signs. Paradigm shift, hackers love it, yet it's derided as a toy. Just like microcomputers.”— Paul Graham
A History of Volatility
Bitcoin moves in cycles, loosely tied to the four-year "halving", when the supply of new coins is cut in half. The long-term trend has been up. Getting there meant falls of 50%, 70%, even 80% along the way.
This calculator runs on real historical prices, so you can see how a plan would have held up through those stretches. From Jul 20, 2015 it uses Coinbase's daily closing prices. Before that, back to Aug 18, 2010, it uses blockchain.info's daily market prices. One caveat is worth knowing. You can switch the price source to Kraken, where we only have one closing price a week: the days in between are straight-line estimates, not prices that traded. Our Methodology page covers how the data is built. Try starting at the December 2017 peak, the March 2020 crash or the November 2021 peak and see how each plan held up.
How to Use This Calculator
- Set amount & frequency: How much per buy (say $50) and how often (daily, weekly, bi-weekly, monthly).
- Select dates: Pick a start date in the past. The earliest date you can pick is Aug 18, 2010, where our daily price data begins.
- Add your fees: Put in what your platform takes from each buy to see what you actually keep. The 5 platforms in our fee comparison that publish a rate take between 0% and 1% of a recurring buy (checked Oct 12, 2026). Where the figure is a fee alone, any spread in the quoted price comes on top.
- Read the results: The cards and the chart show where portfolio value pulled away from what you put in.
- Set a target: If you think in bitcoin rather than dollars, the stack sats calculator shows how long 0.01, 0.1 or a whole coin takes at your contribution rate.
- After the purchase: Bitcoin left on an exchange is a claim on that company, and bitcoin in your own wallet depends on your own backup. Our self-custody guide covers both.
Disclaimer: This site is for education and entertainment, not investment advice. Every figure here comes from historical data, which guarantees nothing about the future. Bitcoin carries a real risk of loss. Do your own research and talk to a qualified financial advisor before you invest.
Bitcoin Adoption
Frequently Asked Questions
Is this calculator accurate?
By default each day is priced at Coinbase's daily close from July 20, 2015, and before that at blockchain.info's daily market price, back to August 18, 2010. That older series is in whole cents, which is coarse for the months to April 2011 when a bitcoin cost under a dollar. Today's price is the latest trade, because the day has not closed. Switch the price source to Kraken and you get weekly closes, with the days in between filled in along a straight line. Every price that is an estimate is marked 'est.' in the purchase table and 'estimated' in the CSV export. If Coinbase cannot be reached, the calculator uses the Kraken series and says so next to the result. The Methodology page documents how every number is computed. The results are for estimation and education.
What do annualized return (XIRR) and max drawdown mean?
XIRR is your yearly return rate, adjusted for the fact that your money went in at different times. Its formal name is money-weighted annualized return. Because it accounts for the size and date of every buy, it's the honest way to put a yearly figure on a DCA plan. Max drawdown is the largest fall your portfolio value took from a high point to the low that came after it.
Does this include transaction fees?
Yes. The calculator starts with a 0.5% fee on every buy. You can change it, add a flat fee per buy, or tap a platform's name to use the figure that platform publishes, which for some is a fee and for others a spread. The fee comes out of each purchase before any bitcoin is bought, and the full amount still counts as money invested. Withdrawal fees and taxes are not modeled, and nothing is added for spread beyond the percentage you set.
What is the best frequency for DCA?
On Coinbase's daily closes since July 2015, the same money spent daily or weekly over any 5-year stretch ended within 2% of each other (measured October 12, 2026). A percentage fee costs the same in total however often you buy. A flat fee per order costs more the more orders you place.
Can I export my data?
Yes. Once your plan has made a purchase, use the CSV button in the result card, or the download icon at the foot of the form. Either one exports your full transaction history. It includes every purchase date, BTC price, amount invested, BTC bought, and portfolio value, converted to your selected currency at one exchange rate, which a file in any currency but US dollars states in a column of its own. When the prices come from an exchange, a Price Kind column says whether each one was observed or estimated. A plan that runs past today exports the purchases made so far, not the ones still to come.