Stroke is a leading cause of death and adult disability. The ability to estimate prognosis in acute stroke patients directly affects treatment decisions for patients. It may also guide supportive care plans, facilitate patient and/or family counseling or discussions pertaining to end-of-life decisions. At the population level, prognostic estimations may assist policymakers in conducting fair comparisons when evaluating stroke fatality among different facilities for hospital outcomes and performance assessment. Clinicians usually rely on their own personal experience or average mortality reported in observational studies, which do not account for valuable information available at the time of the hospital presentation. Unfortunately, few risk scores are available that include simple and relevant clinical variables, including stroke severity on admission. In this large cohort study, we created and validated a risk score model to predict 30-day and 1-year mortality early after hospitalization for patients with an acute ischemic stroke. Our model was designed to include clinical variables easily obtained in the early hours of hospital presentation and is independent of specialized laboratory tests or imaging evaluations. Additionally, this also allows estimating death at small centers and at community hospitals with limited resources. Predictors of mortality included older age, male sex, severe stroke, non-lacunar stroke subtype, glucose ≥ 7.5 mmol/L (135 mg/dL), history of atrial fibrillation, CAD, CHF, cancer, dementia, kidney disease on dialysis and dependency prior to the stroke. Our risk score helps estimate 30-day and 1-year mortality in individuals presenting with an acute ischemic stroke. Examples are provided in the text. An online web based tool is available to estimate mortality by adding individual patient characteristics.