DCF calculator, with the part everyone leaves out
Short answer
A discounted cash flow model estimates what a business is worth by forecasting the cash it produces and discounting that cash back to today. Fill in the six fields below and you get a value per share. Then read the second number we show, the share of that value coming from the terminal value, because on most companies it is over two thirds, and it means the answer is mostly an assumption about the years after your forecast ends.
On this page
Discounted cash flow
Ten year forecast, two growth stages, then a terminal value. Nothing is sent anywhere and nothing is stored.
Enter debt as a negative number. Leave the price at zero to hide the upside line.
Sensitivity. Value per share at one percentage point either side of your discount rate, and half a point either side of your terminal growth. Same company, same forecast.
Read the terminal value share before you read the answer
The calculator forecasts ten years explicitly and then collapses everything after year ten into a single terminal value. On a typical set of inputs, that terminal value is somewhere between half and four fifths of the total. Move the sliders and watch it: the number you came for is mostly a judgement about a period you did not forecast.
That is not a flaw in the method, it is the method. But it explains why two careful analysts produce different answers for the same company without either making an arithmetic error, and it is the reason a single DCF output should never be treated as a price target.
One model is a view. Fourteen is a range
We watched this happen in a controlled way. During a hands-on session on 10 August 2026 we ran a commercial valuation platform on a single large company and recorded the output of every model it applied on the same day, to the same company, using the same data.
| Model | Output |
|---|---|
| Lowest, a dividend discount model | $204.85 |
| 10 year DCF on EBITDA | $264.11 |
| 10 year DCF on revenue | $266.24 |
| 10 year DCF on growth | $267.86 |
| 5 year DCF on revenue | $281.69 |
| 5 year DCF on EBITDA | $288.26 |
| Highest, 5 year DCF on growth | $293.22 |
Seven of the fourteen models active for that company on that day. Full list and the screenshots behind it in our InvestingPro review.
A spread of $204.85 to $293.22 is forty three percent between the low and the high, on one company, on one day. Nobody was wrong. The models simply weight different assumptions, and a dividend based model reaches a different place than a cash flow based one on a company that retains most of its cash.
The practical conclusion is the one this page exists to make: run the calculator, then treat the result as one point in a range rather than as the answer. If your DCF says a share is worth thirty percent more than it trades for, the useful question is not whether to buy, it is which assumption is carrying that conclusion and whether you believe it.
What each input actually means
Free cash flow
Cash from operations minus capital expenditure. Not net income, which carries accounting choices that do not move cash. Use the most recent full year, and if that year was unusual for a reason you can name, use something closer to normal and say so in your own notes.
The two growth rates
Splitting the forecast into years one to five and six to ten is a discipline rather than a precision. It forces the second number to be lower, which is almost always right: high growth attracts competition, and very few businesses compound at double digits for a decade. If your second stage is not meaningfully below your first, you are assuming something unusual and should know that you are.
Discount rate
What return you require for taking the risk, and the single input with the most leverage over the answer. Higher rate, lower value. Institutional models derive it from a weighted average cost of capital; an individual investor can reasonably use their own required return and be consistent about it across every company they value. Consistency matters more than precision here, because a rate you change per company is a rate you are fitting to a conclusion.
Terminal growth
The rate the business grows for ever after year ten. It should be modest, and it cannot sensibly exceed long run economic growth, because a company growing faster than the economy for ever eventually becomes the economy. Something between one and three percent is the usual range. The calculator will refuse to compute if this figure reaches your discount rate, because the arithmetic breaks and the value goes to infinity.
Where to get the inputs without paying for anything
Cash from operations, capital expenditure, share count and net debt all appear in a company's annual report, and every free financial data site carries them. Our guide to Google Finance portfolios covers the free option most people already have open, and the free tier of Stock Analysis, covered in our alternatives comparison, reaches a decade of financial statements without an account.
If you find yourself doing this often enough that pulling the numbers by hand is the slow part, that is the point at which a paid research platform starts to make sense, and our research tools section covers what those cost and what they add. Below that point it is a subscription solving a problem you do not have.
Four ways this goes wrong
- Fitting the inputs to a conclusion you already reached. The most common failure and the hardest to notice. If you adjusted the growth rate after seeing the output, you have built a justification rather than a valuation.
- Using net income instead of free cash flow. Profitable companies with heavy capital spending look far cheaper than they are.
- A terminal growth rate that is too high. Moving it from two to three percent can add twenty percent to the answer, and it is the input people fiddle with precisely because it feels small.
- Forgetting net debt. Enterprise value is not equity value. A company with significant borrowing is worth less to shareholders than its operations are worth in total.
The other number nobody calculates
A valuation tells you what a company might be worth. It does not tell you what holding it costs you every year in commissions, spreads, currency conversion and cash sitting idle. That figure is usually larger than people expect and it compounds against you.
Frequently asked questions
- What discount rate should I use for a DCF?
- There is no correct figure, only a consistent one. Institutional models derive a weighted average cost of capital, typically somewhere between eight and twelve percent for a listed company. An individual investor can reasonably use their own required annual return instead. What matters is applying the same logic to every company you value, because a discount rate adjusted per company is a rate being fitted to a conclusion.
- Why do two DCF models give different answers for the same company?
- Because the terminal value usually carries most of the result, and it rests on assumptions about a period nobody forecast explicitly. In a hands-on session on 10 August 2026 we recorded fourteen valuation models run by one platform on one company on one day, producing outputs from $204.85 to $293.22, a spread of forty three percent. No model was wrong. They weight different assumptions.
- What is a good terminal growth rate?
- Usually between one and three percent. It cannot sensibly exceed long run economic growth, because a business growing faster than the economy for ever would eventually become the whole economy. Raising it from two to three percent can add twenty percent to the valuation, which is why it deserves more scepticism than its size suggests.
- Should I use free cash flow or net income?
- Free cash flow, meaning cash from operations minus capital expenditure. Net income carries accounting choices such as depreciation schedules that do not correspond to cash leaving the business, and using it makes capital intensive companies look considerably cheaper than they are.
- Is a DCF worth doing at all if the answer is so sensitive?
- Yes, but for a different reason than most people expect. Its value is not the number at the end, it is that it forces you to write down what you are assuming about growth, risk and duration. A DCF that produces a wide range is telling you something true about the company. A DCF that produces a precise number is usually hiding the same uncertainty behind fewer decimals.
- Does this calculator store or send my figures anywhere?
- No. Everything runs in your browser, nothing is transmitted, nothing is saved, and there is no account. Closing the tab discards the inputs.
Published 11 August 2026 by Jacob Shasha. The fourteen model figures were recorded in a logged-in session on 10 August 2026 and are documented with screenshots in our InvestingPro review. This page carries no commercial links. Corrections are published at the correction log.