Below is a crude oil price return calculator for the price return on crude oil between any dates since 1987. This isn't contract investment return - it doesn't factor in contango or backwardization, so investor returns will vary compared to price returns.  However, you can see price changes in Brent and West Texas Intermediate (WTI) Crude Oil as a function of time with daily resolution, and inflation adjustment.

If you find this interesting, please also see our Treasury Return Calculator, S&P 500 Total Return Calculator, Gold Return Calculator and Daily Inflation Calculator.

Crude Oil Price Return Calculator

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The calculator takes its data for Brent and WTI crude daily prices from the St. Louis Fed's website. It updates every evening at 12:00 Eastern, so the data you access will generally be a day behind the current market's close.

• Starting Date - The starting, base crude date. Data starts May 20, 1987.  (This may jump for missing data – check after you calculate).
• Ending Date - The ending crude oil date. (This may also be modified by the tool for missing data, check after).
• Total WTI Crude Return - Either be the total price return on a barrel of WTI (West Texas Intermediate) crude or the return adjusted for inflation. The type is noted in the 'Inflation Adjusted' field.
• Annualized WTI Crude Return - The above Total WTI Crude return turned into an annual rate of return.
• Total Brent Crude Return - Either be the total price return on a barrel of Brent crude or the same adjusted for inflation. The adjustment type is noted in the 'Inflation Adjusted' field.
• Annualized Brent Crude Return - The above Total Brent Crude return converted to an annual rate.
• Inflation Adjusted (CPI-U)? - Indicates whether the last calculation used CPI adjusted values as explained in the Daily Inflation Calculator methodology section.

Methodology for the Crude Oil Price Return Calculator

WTI Crude Oil and Brent Crude Oil prices are from the St. Louis Fed.  Those contracts generally trade Monday - Friday, and the tool will adjust your input dates if you select days with no data. 

For the 'last' or 'ending' date, it will use the 'last valid' trading date, but likely won't adjust the date (you can check the result after a calculation).

The daily inflation methodology hasn't changed from the daily inflation calculator.  Please see the methodology section there.

WTI vs Brent Crude Prices

The de facto benchmark for crude oil prices used to be West Texas Intermediate. However, a number of oil fields in the North Sea source Brent Oil, and it took over contract pricing. Many other forms and qualities of oil and distillates are now based on the Brent contract price combined with some multiple.

I don't want to pick sides, however – this calculator computes returns for both. To see the decoupling of the major crude benchmarks, here's a graph of the two from 1986 through Summer 2019 (don't worry, the data in the tool is fully updated):

When people quote the returns of the S&P 500, they like to use the 'price return', as if price returns are the only way that stocks in the S&P 500 can make you money.  As you can tell by my sarcastic writing - you're neglecting a pretty big portion of returns - namely, in the form of dividends.  In this article we present the 2012 S&P 500 Return calculated correctly.

The 2012 S&P 500 Return

You're looking at the S&P 500 graphed next to SPXT (on marketwatch), the S&P 500 total Return Index.  That's right - dividends included.  So, all of you who quote the S&P 500 in the future, please use the right index. That ticker goes back to 2009.  If you need it on a larger time frame, you can check out the dividend reinvestment calculator for the S&P 500 (like, say, 1876 until today?) right here on this very site.  You're welcome!

	Jan 3 Open	Dec 31 Close	Return
S&P TR	2158.93	2504.44	16.00%
S&P 500	1258.86	1426.19	13.29%

How do you like 'dem apples? Other years:

• 2023 S&P 500 Return
• 2022 S&P 500 Return
• 2021 S&P 500 Return
• 2020 S&P 500 Return
• 2019 S&P 500 Return
• 2018 S&P 500 Return
• 2017 S&P 500 Return
• 2016 S&P 500 Return
• 2015 S&P 500 Return
• 2014 S&P 500 Return
• 2013 S&P 500 Return

Below is a S&P 500 return calculator with dividend reinvestment. It also has inflation data integrated, so it can estimate total investment returns before taxes. It shows the price return of the index along with the estimated effect of reinvested dividends.

S&P 500 calculator: nominal and inflation-adjusted

For last year, see the 2025 S&P 500 return. Also see the 2024 S&P 500 return.

Pick a starting and ending month and the calculator updates in real time. Here's what it shows:

• Total S&P 500 Price Return – the price return of the index over your window, no dividends. Same level on the start and end month? Mark it 0.
• Annualized S&P 500 Price Return – that price return expressed as a return per year.
• Total S&P 500 Return (Dividends Reinvested) – the total return if you had reinvested every dividend into more of the index.
• Annualized S&P 500 Return (Dividends Reinvested) – the dividend-reinvested total return, annualized.
• Inflation Adjusted (CPI)? – whether the scenario is shown in real, CPI-adjusted terms, using Shiller's CPI series with infill from FRED.

Click Show Chart to graph the growth of $10,000: the blue line reinvests dividends, the gray line is price only, so the gap between them is the dividend contribution piling up. Tick Log scale for a logarithmic vertical axis, which helps keep long, multi-decade windows readable.

Methodology of the S&P 500 Return Calculator

Professor Shiller lists his methodology on his site - all values internal to this tool use the values he provided (outside of the most recent month).

How do monthly S&P 500 prices work?

The month's 'Price' isn't the price on a particular day, but an average of closing prices. It answers "what did the average investor who invested randomly during the beginning month and sold randomly during the ending month do?".

Let me say that again in a different way: other than the most recent month, which is tied to one closing price, the month DOES NOT correspond to an individual day. It's a guess at an average investor's price basis (or sale price) if they bought (or sold) "at some point" in the month.

Also, important (since it comes up often in the comments): because it isn't an individual date, that means when you're trying to compute yearly returns, you need to be careful to pick twelve months - so, if you were interested in the annual return of 2013, you would pick Jan-2013 to Jan-2014 or Dec-2012 or Dec-2013 to get roughly 12 months.

If you want exact dates, try our mutual fund return calculator or ETF return calculator.

How do dividend prices work?

To calculate the 'dividend reinvested' price index:

• Take the trailing twelve month dividend yield reported in any month of Shiller's data.
• Divide by 12 to get an approximate count of dividends paid out in a month.
• Calculate how many 'shares' of the S&P 500 index you can buy.
• Run a cumulative count from your start to your chosen end date.

This will, of course, not match the results of an individual investor. It's extremely complicated to go back and calculate exact S&P 500 payout dates for each fund in each brokerage for one specific investor, and figure out what the index was trading at on that date.

Other Calculators and Other Ways to See S&P 500 Historical Return Data

We also present this data from the perspective of average return over various time periods.

• A Treasury Return Calculator using the same data can be found at that link.
• We also have similar calculators based on the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the NASDAQ.
• An ETF Return Calculator, which may better approximate how individual investors performed.
• Finally, try our individual stock dividend reinvestment calculator.

Also: Our S&P 500 Periodic Reinvestment calculator can model fees, taxes, etc. The S&P 500 History Calculator lets you compare time periods. Also see our CAPE/Shiller PE calculator for valuation. For all our calculators, go to this page.

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