Abstract: New York City (NYC), the most populous city in the United States, was one of the early epicenters of the global COVID-19 pandemic. To combat the outbreaks of SARS-CoV-2 and mitigate devastating outcomes, NYC launched its vaccination campaign on December 14, 2020. Within the first year of vaccination, over 76% of the residents were fully vaccinated. In addition to providing direct protection to vaccinated individuals, vaccination has generated the societal benefits of safeguarding community productivity and providing indirect protection to unvaccinated individuals. Understanding the reurn on the vaccine investment in NYC could help inform more optimal and targeted policies as we transition to the endemic state of the COVID-19. Here, we quantify the economic and public health return of vaccination efforts in NYC, by calculating the return-cost ratio from the outcomes of an agent-based model of disease transmission parameterized with NYC data and characteristics of SARS-CoV-2 variants.