What is dollar cost averaging in crypto?

Dollar cost averaging means buying a fixed dollar amount on a fixed schedule regardless of price. You buy more units when the price is low and fewer when it is high, which smooths your average entry price and removes the need to time the market.

Is DCA better than a lump sum?

It depends on the price path. In a market that rises steadily from your start date, a lump sum wins because all your capital is exposed from day one. In a choppy or falling market that later recovers, DCA wins because your average cost basis ends up lower. This calculator shows both outcomes side by side for the period you select.

What data does this calculator use?

Real historical OHLC price data for the asset and period you select, fetched live. Results are a backtest of what the strategy would have produced, not a forecast.

Is this DCA calculator free?

Yes. The calculator on this page is free and needs no sign-up. Koinlytics also offers a full portfolio tracker that reads your real on-chain positions across seven chains.

Crypto DCA Calculator

Backtest dollar cost averaging on real historical prices. Pick an asset, an amount and a schedule, and see exactly what you would hold today, your average cost basis, and whether DCA would have beaten putting the same money in on day one. Free, no sign-up.

Asset

Amount per buy (USD)

Frequency

Look-back period

Invested vs portfolio value

Loading price history…

Portfolio value Total invested

Total invested— buys

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Value today— units held

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Returnprofit or loss vs invested

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Average cost basisyour blended entry price

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DCA vs lump sum

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Same total capital, all invested on the first day of the period.

Side by side

Strategy	Invested	Value today	Return
Dollar cost averaging	—	—	—
Lump sum on day one	—	—	—

How dollar cost averaging works

Dollar cost averaging means committing a fixed dollar amount on a fixed schedule and buying regardless of what the price is doing. When the asset is cheap that amount buys more units; when it is expensive it buys fewer. The blended result is your average cost basis, and it is almost always lower than the average price over the same window.

The appeal is not that DCA maximises return. It is that it removes the single decision most people get wrong: choosing the entry date. In an asset that routinely draws down 60 to 80 percent, that matters more than a few percentage points of theoretical edge.

When a lump sum beats DCA

In an asset that trends up from your start date, a lump sum wins by construction: all of your capital is exposed for the entire period, while a DCA schedule holds most of it in cash and deploys it at progressively higher prices. Run the calculator across a 2023 or 2024 bull window and you will see the lump sum column ahead.

DCA wins when the path is choppy or falls before it recovers. The later buys land at lower prices and drag the cost basis down. That is the trade you are making: you give up expected return in exchange for a much narrower spread of outcomes.

What the full Koinlytics tracker adds

Reads your real balances from connected wallets instead of a hypothetical schedule.
Tracks LP positions with tick ranges, collected fees and impermanent loss per pool.
Covers Ethereum, Solana, Base, Arbitrum, Optimism, Polygon and BNB in one dashboard.
Live price alerts, a token screener and a DeFi explorer built on the same data.

Frequently asked questions

Where does the price data come from?

Real historical OHLC data for the asset and window you pick, fetched live when you change a setting. It is a backtest of what actually happened, not a projection.

Does this account for fees or taxes?

No. Exchange fees, network fees and taxes are excluded, so both columns are gross. Fees hurt DCA slightly more because it makes more transactions.

Which frequency is best?

The difference between daily, weekly and monthly is small over long windows. Weekly is the common compromise between smoothing and transaction count.

Can I DCA into a liquidity pool instead?

You can, but the maths changes because the pool rebalances your two assets against each other. Use the impermanent loss calculator to model that side.