Carried interest calculator
With 1,000,000 of fund profits, an 8% hurdle and 20% carry, the manager earns 184,000 and limited partners keep 816,000. Enter profits, hurdle and carry to split any profit pool before you open a full waterfall workbook. Free in your browser.
- Free
- Runs in your browser
- No sign-up
- Your data stays on your device
Run — free
Worked example
- Fund profits
- 1,000,000
- Hurdle rate
- 8
- Carry percentage
- 20
- Hurdle amount
- 80,000
- Excess profits
- 920,000
- Carried interest
- 184,000
- Lp share
- 816,000
Carried interest is the general partner's contractual share of a private equity, venture, or hedge fund's profits — the slice of upside that pays the manager after limited partners have received their preferred return. This carried interest calculator takes three finite numbers in one currency: fund profits, a hurdle rate as a percent, and a carry percentage. It applies a European whole-fund waterfall with no catch-up: limited partners receive the hurdle slice of profits first, then the manager receives the carry percentage of what remains. When profits are zero or negative the manager's share is zero, because carried interest is a share of profits, not of losses.
How the waterfall turns profits, hurdle, and carry into a manager share
Carried interest, often just called carry, is the general partner's share of a fund's distributable profits. In the classic two-and-twenty bargain the manager receives twenty percent of profits after limited partners have been paid a preferred return, commonly eight percent. This calculator implements that identity on already-computed profits, not on an internal rate of return against committed capital.
Limited partners take the hurdle slice of profits first: one million of profits at an eight percent hurdle sends eighty thousand to the preferred return. The excess of nine hundred twenty thousand is then split: a twenty percent carry sends one hundred eighty-four thousand to the manager and leaves eight hundred sixteen thousand for limited partners in total. A hurdle of zero is a legitimate deal with no preferred return, and the manager then takes the carry percentage of every unit of profit.
A carry of zero is also legitimate and returns a manager share of zero. You supply the three numbers; the calculator divides the profit pool and rounds money fields half-up to six decimal places so goldens compare byte-for-byte across runtimes.
What you can do with it
Term-sheet screen before a full waterfall
Turn distributable profits, the LPA hurdle, and the stated carry into one manager share before you open a deal-by-deal workbook.
Fund-admin and placement cross-checks
Pin a European whole-fund manager share next to an American catch-up case so notices and data rooms share one profit split.
FAQ
How is carried interest calculated?
Limited partners take the hurdle slice of profits first; the manager then takes the carry percentage of the excess. Money fields are rounded half-up to six decimal places.
Are the hurdle and the carry entered as percents or decimals?
Percents from 0 to 100. Twenty percent carry is 20, not 0.20. An eight percent hurdle is 8, not 0.08. The same convention is used for both fields so a term sheet can be copied without converting units.
Is this an IRR hurdle or an American waterfall with catch-up?
There is no catch-up, no clawback, and no deal-by-deal layer. Those are different searches and different jobs.
What does the manager get if the fund loses money?
Nothing. Carried interest is a share of profits, not of losses, so zero or negative profits give a manager share of zero and the loss stays with the limited partners. There is no clawback step in this calculation.
Should I enter profits before or after returning invested capital?
After. Enter the fund's total distributable profit once invested capital has been returned, in a single currency. The hurdle slice comes off that figure first, and the carry applies to what remains.
Related tools
For developers — API access
Everything on this page is available programmatically. This section is for teams who want to wire it into their own systems; everyone else can just use the tool above.
API endpoint
Prefer to automate it? One authenticated POST creates the task; the result comes back by webhook or a signed link. The same capability also runs here on the web, by email and from Telegram — and soon from our app too.
Call it from your stack
curl -X POST https://api.kit.forhosting.com/fin/carried-interest \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $KIT_KEY" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"fund_profits":1000000,"hurdle_rate":8,"carry_percentage":20}'const res = await fetch("https://api.kit.forhosting.com/fin/carried-interest", {
method: "POST",
headers: {
"Authorization": `Bearer ${process.env.KIT_KEY}`,
"Content-Type": "application/json"
},
body: JSON.stringify({
"fund_profits": 1000000,
"hurdle_rate": 8,
"carry_percentage": 20
})
});
const { task_id } = await res.json();import os, requests
res = requests.post(
"https://api.kit.forhosting.com/fin/carried-interest",
headers={"Authorization": f"Bearer {os.environ['KIT_KEY']}"},
json={
"fund_profits": 1000000,
"hurdle_rate": 8,
"carry_percentage": 20
},
)
task_id = res.json()["task_id"]<?php
$res = file_get_contents("https://api.kit.forhosting.com/fin/carried-interest", false, stream_context_create([
"http" => [
"method" => "POST",
"header" => "Authorization: Bearer " . getenv("KIT_KEY") . "\r\nContent-Type: application/json",
"content" => '{"fund_profits":1000000,"hurdle_rate":8,"carry_percentage":20}',
],
]));
$task = json_decode($res, true);body := bytes.NewBufferString(`{"fund_profits":1000000,"hurdle_rate":8,"carry_percentage":20}`)
req, _ := http.NewRequest("POST", "https://api.kit.forhosting.com/fin/carried-interest", body)
req.Header.Set("Authorization", "Bearer "+os.Getenv("KIT_KEY"))
req.Header.Set("Content-Type", "application/json")
res, _ := http.DefaultClient.Do(req)Example request
{
"fund_profits": 1000000,
"hurdle_rate": 8,
"carry_percentage": 20
}Example response
{
"task_id": "tsk_a1b2c3d4e5f6a1b2c3d4e5f6",
"type": "fin.carried_interest",
"status": "queued",
"_links": {
"result": "/tasks/tsk_…/result"
}
}The API is asynchronous: the call returns a task_id immediately and the result arrives by webhook. Polling is capped at 1 req/s per task.
Pricing
Published price — no tokens, no invented credits. A failed task is never charged.
Errors
| HTTP | Code | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
401 | unauthorized | Missing or invalid API key. |
402 | insufficient_balance | Your balance doesn't cover the task price. |
404 | unknown_type | That task type doesn't exist. |
429 | rate_limited | Too many requests. Use the webhook instead of polling. |
Technical notes
A carry percentage outside the closed interval from zero to one hundred is rejected with invalid_input and is not billed.
How the waterfall turns profits, hurdle, and carry into a manager share
The identity is carried_interest equals max of zero and fund_profits, times one minus hurdle_rate over one hundred, times carry_percentage over one hundred. Zero or negative fund profits produce a carried interest of zero and leave the loss on lp_share: the manager does not share losses in this model, and there is no clawback layer. The endpoint does not reconstruct a capital account, does not compute an IRR hurdle, does not run a deal-by-deal American waterfall, and does not apply a general-partner catch-up.
Input contract, response shape, and error behaviour
Twenty means twenty percent, not two tenths. POST a JSON body with three required finite numbers. fund_profits is total distributable profit in one currency unit after returning invested capital; aliases profits, profit, total_profits, and fund_profit map to the same field so a spreadsheet column can keep its name. hurdle_rate is the preferred return as a percent of those profits, from zero to one hundred inclusive; aliases hurdle, preferred_return, and pref are accepted. Eight means eight percent, not eight hundredths. carry_percentage is the general partner's share of profits above the hurdle, from zero to one hundred inclusive; aliases carry, carry_percent, and carry_pct are accepted. Each numeric field may arrive as a JSON number or a numeric string. Missing fields, empty strings, and non-finite values fail with invalid_input naming the field. Those failures are not billed. fund_profits may be zero or negative: a year with no gain or a realised loss produces a carried interest of zero rather than a negative manager share. On success the body echoes the three inputs, then reports hurdle_amount, excess_profits, carried_interest as the manager's profit share, lp_share as the limited partners' remaining slice, and a formula string restating the identity. Pair the JSON with your own rule for which profit figure matches the term sheet — deal-level proceeds, whole-fund NAV gain, or a single realisation — because this endpoint splits the number you send; it does not rebuild the waterfall from capital calls.
Where a carried interest calculator earns its keep
General partners screening a term sheet use a carried interest calculator to turn last year's distributable profits, the hurdle in the limited partnership agreement, and the stated carry into one manager share before they open a full waterfall workbook. Carried interest prices a manager's contractual slice of fund profits after a hurdle. Failed validation does not consume balance. Limited partners re-run the same three fields when a realisation closes or a preferred return is waived, then pin carried_interest in a distribution notice so every investor conversation starts from one figure. Placement agents and fund-admin teams drop fund_profits from the unaudited pack and hurdle_rate plus carry_percentage from the LPA, and they compare the European whole-fund result with an American catch-up case rather than treating either path as a substitute. This is a different search and a different job from simple interest, from interest capitalization, from a cap rate, and from a business-valuation multiple: those tools price a loan, compound unpaid interest, yield an income property, or scale earnings. Keep carry_percentage inside zero to one hundred, pin the rounded manager share in tests, and you get a reproducible profit split for term sheets, LMS plugins, and edge workers without modelling catch-up, clawback, or an IRR hurdle of your own.
Integration use cases
Distribution notices and LP portals
Re-price a realisation when profits land or a preferred return is waived: same calculator, new fund_profits or hurdle_rate, one shared carried_interest.
Technical questions
What happens if the carry percentage is outside zero to one hundred?
The task fails with invalid_input. carry_percentage (aliases carry, carry_percent, carry_pct) must be a finite number from zero to one hundred inclusive. A carry rate is a closed percentage, not an unbounded multiplier, and those failures are not billed. hurdle_rate is held to the same interval.
What does the carried interest calculator cost?
The browser tool is free. API requests use prepaid KIT balance at $0.002 per successful call; invalid input is not billed.