What's the difference between APR and APY?

APR is a flat yearly rate with no compounding. APY includes compounding, so it's the bigger number for the same underlying rate. This calculator shows both paths so you can see the gap.

How often do DeFi farms actually compound?

It varies. Auto-compounder vaults reinvest for you, sometimes many times a day. Plain farms don't compound at all unless you claim rewards and re-stake them yourself, which costs a little gas each time.

Why doesn't this match the APY on my farm's dashboard?

Farm dashboards usually assume constant rates, daily compounding, and a stable reward-token price. Change any of those assumptions and the number moves. Our calculator lets you set the schedule yourself, so you can test theirs.

Does this include fees, taxes, or impermanent loss?

No. It models pure interest math only. Gas fees, taxes, and impermanent loss all reduce real-world results, sometimes by a lot.

Is this financial advice?

No. It's an educational tool for understanding compound growth. Nothing on this site is financial advice, and no calculator output is a prediction of what you'll earn.

Yield Farming Calculator — Zabu Finance

Every farm and staking app greets you with a percentage. This tool turns that percentage into dollars. Enter what you'd deposit, the APR, how often rewards compound, and for how long. You'll see the simple path and the compounded path side by side — and the gap between them is the whole reason compounding gets talked about so much.

Simple growth: –
Compound growth: –
Extra earned by compounding: –
Effective APY at this schedule: –

How the math works

Simple growth is flat. Your rewards pile up next to your deposit, but they never earn anything themselves. The formula is: amount × (1 + rate × years). So $1,000 at 20% APR for three years is $1,000 × 1.6 = $1,600. Steady, predictable, a little boring.

Compound growth reinvests every reward, so your rewards start earning rewards of their own. The formula is: amount × (1 + rate ÷ n) raised to the power of (n × years), where n is how many times per year you compound. Same $1,000 at 20% for three years, compounded monthly, grows to about $1,813. That extra $213 didn't come from a better rate. It came from earlier yield quietly going back to work.

Two things decide how big the gap gets: time and rate. Small rates over short periods barely notice compounding. Big rates over long periods get dramatic.

$1,000 at 20% APR: simple vs compound (yearly compounding, example)

The chart uses yearly compounding to keep the comparison clean. The calculator above lets you try monthly, weekly, or daily schedules — you'll notice each step up adds a bit less than the last one. Compounding has diminishing returns on frequency, which is a detail most farm banners skip. Our APY vs APR guide walks through why.

What this calculator can't tell you

This tool assumes your rate never changes and the token's price holds still. Real DeFi does neither. Farm APYs are snapshots that can halve in a week as more people pile in, and rewards paid in a falling token can shrink faster than compounding grows them. It also ignores gas fees and any deposit or withdrawal charges, which nibble hardest at small positions. The math of yield farming also includes things this page doesn't model at all: impermanent loss, gas costs from manual compounding, and the risk that a contract simply breaks.

So use the calculator the way it's meant: to translate a percentage into dollar terms, compare scenarios, and sanity-check a shiny number. It's an educational tool, not a promise of returns — the same rule as everything else on this site.

How the math works

What this calculator can't tell you

Questions people ask