Enter a bond's face value, coupon rate, current price, and years to maturity to calculate current yield and approximate yield to maturity.
How to Use the Bond Yield Calculator
Enter the face value, annual coupon rate, current market price, and years to maturity — the calculator returns current yield and an approximate yield to maturity from those four numbers alone.
"Yield" means different things depending on who's asking. This tool covers the two quick answers: what you're earning right now against what you paid, and a fast estimate of what you'd earn holding the bond all the way to maturity.
Current Yield
The simpler of the two — just the annual coupon divided by what the bond actually costs today, not its face value:
Annual Coupon = Face Value × Coupon Rate ÷ 100
Current Yield = Annual Coupon ÷ Current Price × 100Buy a bond below face value and current yield runs higher than the stated coupon rate, because the same fixed coupon is being measured against a smaller price paid.
Approximate Yield to Maturity
Current yield ignores one thing entirely: whether the bond was bought at a discount or premium to what it pays back at maturity. This approximation folds that in by averaging the annual coupon with the amortized gain or loss over the remaining years, against the average of face value and price:
YTM ≈ [Coupon + (Face Value − Price) ÷ Years] ÷ [(Face Value + Price) ÷ 2] × 100It's a textbook shortcut, not the true yield — the real figure requires solving where the bond's discounted cash flows equal its price exactly, which has no algebraic shortcut and needs a numerical solver instead. That's a deliberately separate tool on this site (the Yield to Maturity Calculator) for anyone who needs the precise figure rather than this quick estimate.
When the Two Numbers Diverge
Current yield and approximate YTM sit close together for a bond trading near par with a long time left to maturity. They pull apart the deeper the bond trades into a discount or premium and the fewer years remain — a bond one year from maturity, priced well below face value, can show an approximate YTM noticeably above its current yield, since the whole price gap gets amortized over just that one remaining year.
Default numbers here — $1,000 face, 5% coupon, $950 price, ten years — put current yield at about 5.26% and approximate YTM at roughly 5.64%. The gap between them is the $50 discount to face value getting spread across the ten years until maturity, on top of the coupon itself; current yield only ever sees the coupon.