Margin versus markup
Cost 60 and price 100 produce profit 40, margin 40%, and markup 66.67%. A 40% margin and 40% markup are not interchangeable.
Finance
Calculate profit margin, markup, target price, break-even units, and net profit after discounts, marketplace fees, payment fees, shipping, packaging, and tax.
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Enter cost and selling price. Margin uses revenue as its base; markup uses cost.
Use Margin & markup with unit cost and selling price to see gross profit and both percentages.
Use Target price, choose margin or markup, then enter cost and the required percentage.
Use Discount, fees & tax and include every transaction cost before judging profitability.
Cost 60 and price 100 produce profit 40, margin 40%, and markup 66.67%. A 40% margin and 40% markup are not interchangeable.
A product costing 45 with a 25% target margin needs a selling price of 60: 45 ÷ (1 − 0.25).
Fixed costs of 10,000, price of 50, and variable cost of 30 create 20 contribution per unit, so break-even is 500 units and 25,000 revenue.
Start with list price, reduce it by the discount, separate tax, subtract percentage and fixed fees, then subtract product, shipping, and packaging costs to reveal final profit.
Pricing becomes confusing when several correct percentages describe the same sale. A product that costs 60 and sells for 100 earns 40 of gross profit. Its margin is 40% because profit is measured against the 100 of revenue. Its markup is 66.67% because the same profit is measured against the 60 of cost. Neither number is wrong, but substituting one for the other can quietly erase the profit a business expected.
The Margin, Markup & Break-even Calculator keeps those bases explicit. Its first mode gives gross profit, margin, and markup from cost and selling price. Target-price mode reverses the formulas, so a seller can start with a required 40% margin and discover that a 60 cost needs a 100 selling price. Choosing a 40% markup instead produces 84, a materially different answer. The tool can also solve the allowable cost from a known selling price and desired percentage, which is useful during sourcing and supplier negotiation.
Break-even mode adds the operating context that a per-unit margin alone cannot supply. Contribution per unit is selling price minus variable cost. Dividing fixed costs by contribution shows the exact theoretical break-even volume, while the operational answer rounds up to a whole unit. The contribution margin ratio also converts fixed costs into break-even revenue. This helps founders, retailers, consultants, and creators connect individual sales to rent, salaries, software, equipment, and other costs that exist even when nothing is sold.
Real transactions rarely stop at cost and list price, so the advanced mode follows the money through a discount, marketplace percentage, payment-processing percentage, fixed transaction fee, shipping, packaging, and tax. It separates the amount a customer pays, tax collected, fees, revenue before cost, total unit costs, and final profit. For tax included in price, the tax portion is backed out before revenue. For tax added on top, the customer payment rises while tax remains separate from business revenue. Marketplace and payment percentages are applied to the customer payment, an assumption stated beside the form because actual platforms may use a different base.
Saved products make the calculator useful as a lightweight pricing notebook without creating an account. Rows are stored only in browser local storage and can be loaded for editing, duplicated for variants, deleted individually, cleared with confirmation, or exported to CSV. Sensitivity analysis then answers the next question: what happens if price, cost, fee rate, or volume moves? Five scenarios around the baseline show profit per unit, margin, total profit after fixed costs, and break-even units. The baseline is highlighted, and the table scrolls horizontally on small screens instead of compressing figures into unreadable cells.
All calculation functions are client-side, reusable, and tested independently of the interface. Results are rounded consistently for display while formulas retain enough precision to avoid obvious floating-point artifacts. The calculator is currency-neutral: the selector formats numbers but never fetches exchange rates or changes an amount. It is a planning aid, not a substitute for a platform statement, accountant, tax adviser, or jurisdiction-specific rules.
Choose the mode that matches your decision. Margin & markup checks an existing cost and selling price; Target price works backward from a desired margin or markup; Break-even finds the volume needed to cover fixed costs; Discount, fees & tax models a real transaction; Saved products compares scenarios stored in your browser; and Sensitivity tests a range around a baseline.
Pick a display currency. This changes the symbol and number grouping only. It does not convert values, so every amount you enter must use the same currency.
Enter the known figures. Fields reject missing, negative, non-finite, or mathematically impossible values. In break-even mode, variable cost must be lower than selling price. A target margin must stay below 100%.
Read the result panel and its formula note. Margin is profit divided by revenue; markup is profit divided by cost. Break-even whole units are rounded upward because a partial unit cannot finish covering fixed costs.
In the advanced pricing mode, select whether tax is absent, added on top, or included in the displayed price. Percentage fees use the customer's payment as their base; the tool removes tax before treating the remaining amount as revenue.
Save useful product scenarios locally, duplicate or edit them, and export saved products or sensitivity rows as UTF-8 CSV. Clearing all saved products requires confirmation.
Find selling price, allowable cost, gross profit, margin, or markup from the values you know.
See exact and whole-unit break-even volume, break-even revenue, contribution per unit, and contribution ratio.
Separate discount, tax, marketplace fee, payment fee, fixed fee, shipping, packaging, net revenue, and profit.
Save, reload, duplicate, delete, clear, and export product rows without an account or server upload.
Test price, unit cost, fee rate, or volume changes around a baseline and export the comparison as CSV.
Keyboard-friendly controls, live result labels, clear error messages, dark mode, and mobile-safe scrolling.
Check whether a marketplace listing remains profitable after promotions, commissions, payment processing, fulfillment, and tax treatment.
Translate target retail margin into a maximum landed cost or required shelf price.
Model a project or package price against delivery costs and monthly overhead.
Estimate how many units must sell before a campaign, production run, or storefront covers fixed costs.
Solve the highest acceptable cost at a fixed market price and required margin.
Gross profit is selling price − cost. Margin uses selling price as the denominator: profit ÷ selling price × 100. Markup uses cost: profit ÷ cost × 100. To reach a target margin, selling price is cost ÷ (1 − margin). To reach a target markup, it is cost × (1 + markup). Percentages are converted to decimals inside these formulas.
Contribution per unit is selling price − variable cost. Break-even units are fixed costs ÷ contribution per unit. The calculator shows the exact quotient and rounds the practical unit count upward. Contribution margin ratio is contribution ÷ selling price, and break-even revenue is fixed costs ÷ contribution ratio.
The advanced mode first applies the discount. Added tax increases the customer payment; included tax is extracted by dividing the tax-inclusive price by 1 + tax rate. Percentage fees use the customer payment as their base, then fixed fees are added. Net revenue is revenue before tax minus fees. Profit is net revenue minus product cost, shipping, and packaging. Margin after fees uses net revenue as its base; markup uses total unit costs.
None, added on top, or included in the entered price.
INR, USD, EUR, GBP, AED, AUD, CAD, SGD, and JPY formatting with no currency conversion.
Selling price, unit cost, fee percentage, or sales volume.
UTF-8 CSV for saved product rows and sensitivity scenarios.
A 50% markup on a 100 cost creates a 150 price and only a 33.33% margin. Always confirm which base a target uses.
A processor may charge its percentage on tax and shipping as well as item price. Match the calculator assumption to the platform statement.
Tax collected for an authority is separated from revenue in this model.
The exact result may contain a fraction, but operational break-even requires the next whole unit.
The calculator models one product or scenario at a time and assumes the entered values stay constant within that calculation. It does not model tiered marketplace fees, refunds, chargebacks, inventory carrying cost, income tax, multi-product sales mix, currency conversion, exchange-rate risk, or time value of money. Sensitivity analysis changes one selected input around a baseline; it is not a probability forecast. Tax and fee rules vary, so reconcile important decisions with current contracts, platform statements, and professional advice.
Calculations run entirely in the browser. Saved products use this site's local storage and are not uploaded to the server. CSV files are assembled locally. No account is required; clearing browser storage removes saved rows.
Model landed cost, not only supplier price: include inbound freight, packaging, and other per-unit costs.
Confirm fee bases against a recent real marketplace or processor statement.
Keep tax separate from revenue when it is collected on behalf of an authority.
Compare scenarios by changing one variable at a time before combining assumptions.
Use a target margin that leaves room for returns, spoilage, support, and promotional discounts.
Export saved rows before clearing browser data or moving to another device.
Start with every cost caused by one additional sale: the item, inbound freight allocation, packaging, outbound shipping you absorb, transaction fees, and predictable fulfillment charges. Keep fixed overhead in break-even mode rather than double-counting it per unit unless you intentionally allocate it.
When a business has a margin requirement, work backward with the margin formula. Adding the same percentage to cost produces markup, not margin. Then rerun the price through the advanced mode with the promotion and channel fees that customers will actually encounter.
Use sensitivity analysis for plausible cost inflation, fee increases, discounts, or volume changes. A healthy baseline that turns negative after a small movement deserves a larger buffer or a different channel.
All modes call pure functions in a standalone ES module. Inputs are converted to finite numbers, checked against mode-specific bounds, and guarded against zero or negative denominators. Intermediate results are normalized to ten decimal places; currency output is locale formatted to two decimals. Break-even whole units use Math.ceil on the normalized exact result. CSV escaping follows RFC-style quoting for commas, quotes, and line breaks and adds a UTF-8 byte-order mark during browser download for spreadsheet compatibility. Saved-product JSON is parsed defensively and capped at 200 valid rows.
Margin answers “what percentage of revenue remains as profit?” Markup answers “what percentage was added to cost?” Contribution margin answers “how much of each sale remains to cover fixed costs and profit?” Net margin after fees in this tool uses revenue remaining after tax and transaction fees, then compares final unit profit with that net revenue. Choose the measure that matches the decision instead of comparing percentages with different denominators.
Independent sellers, marketplace merchants, retailers, wholesalers, makers, consultants, creators, small-business owners, product managers, and students who need transparent pricing math. It is especially useful when a simple margin calculator is too narrow because discounts, processor fees, shipping, packaging, taxes, fixed overhead, and scenario comparisons affect the real decision.
Margin divides profit by selling price, while markup divides profit by cost. With cost 60 and price 100, profit is 40, margin is 40%, and markup is 66.67%.
Convert the margin percentage to a decimal and divide cost by one minus that decimal. A 60 cost at 40% target margin is 60 ÷ 0.60 = 100.
At 100% margin, cost would need to be zero or selling price infinite. With a positive cost there is no finite valid price.
If the exact result is 83.33 units, selling 83 whole units does not fully cover fixed cost. The first operational break-even point is 84 units.
A variable cost changes with each additional sale, such as product cost, packaging, fulfillment, or per-order shipping. Rent and salaried overhead are commonly fixed costs.
In the advanced mode they are applied to the amount the customer pays. Check your provider because some platforms use a different base.
The tax-exclusive revenue is the included price divided by one plus the tax rate. The difference is reported as tax rather than revenue.
No. It changes symbol and grouping only. Enter every amount in the same currency.
They are stored in local storage in the current browser profile. They are not synced or uploaded.
Yes. Saved products and sensitivity results can be downloaded as UTF-8 CSV files.
It changes one selected variable across five values around the baseline and recomputes unit profit, margin, total profit, and break-even units.
No. It is a planning calculator. Confirm material pricing, fee, and tax assumptions with current statements and a qualified professional.