Enter an initial value, a growth rate, and a number of periods to project exponential growth forward.
How to Use the Exponential Growth Calculator
Initial value, growth rate, and number of periods — the same three-field shape as the Future Value calculator, framed for population or investment growth instead of a lump sum.
$1,000 growing at 5% a period doesn't add $50 every time — it adds more each period, because the 5% is calculated on an ever-larger base. Ten periods in, that same starting $1,000 has become roughly $1,628.89, not the $1,500 flat growth would suggest. This Exponential Growth Calculator projects any starting value forward at a constant per-period rate.
final value = initial value × (1 + rate)^periodsThe acceleration is the whole point of exponential growth, and it's the same mechanism behind compound interest: each period's gain compounds on top of the last one's gain, not just the original amount. That's why the curve looks flat for a while and then doesn't.
Population growth, compound interest, and bacteria with unlimited food all follow this idealized pattern — emphasis on idealized. Real growth usually hits a ceiling eventually (resources run out, markets saturate); this formula models the unconstrained version, before anything slows it down. Feed it a negative rate and it runs the same math backward, into decay instead of growth.