Check what you keep from a sale
Enter the cost of one item and its selling price. If it costs 60.00 and sells for 100.00, the profit is 40.00 and the margin is 40%. That means 40% of the selling price remains after the entered cost.
Open Extra costs when shipping or fees affect the sale. With the same item, shipping of 5.00, fixed fees of 2.00, and a 10% selling fee leave 23.00 profit, or 23% margin. Include each cost once.
Find a price for your target
Choose Find a selling price and enter the margin you want. A cost of 60.00 and a 25% target give a price of 80.00, with 20.00 profit. Simply adding 25% to the cost would give 75.00, which is only a 20% margin.
The suggested price rounds upward to two decimals. If rounding the fee leaves the margin slightly short, the calculator increases the price by cents until the target is met. This is a price based on your inputs, not a prediction of what a buyer will pay.
How the calculation works
1. Work out the selling fee
Selling fee
= Selling price × fee percentage ÷ 100
At a price of 100.00 with a 10% fee: 100.00 × 10 ÷ 100 = 10.00. Round the fee to cents; a half cent rounds up.
2. Subtract the costs to find profit
Profit
= Selling price
− Item cost
− Shipping
− Fixed fees and other costs
− Selling fee
For the example above: 100.00 − 60.00 − 5.00 − 2.00 − 10.00 = 23.00.
3. Turn profit into a margin
Margin (%)
= Profit ÷ selling price
× 100
23.00 ÷ 100.00 × 100 = 23% margin. A zero selling price makes this division undefined.
To find a price for a target margin
Work backward in three smaller steps:
A. Add the fixed costs
Item cost + shipping + fixed fees and other costs
B. Find the percentage left for those costs
100% − target margin (%) − selling fee (%)
C. Divide to find the price
Total from A ÷ (percentage from B ÷ 100)
With 67.00 in fixed costs, a 30% target, and a 10% fee, 60% remains to cover costs. The base price is 67.00 ÷ 0.60 = 111.666…. Rounding the fee at 111.67 leaves the margin just below 30%, so the suggested price is 111.68. Its rounded fee is 11.17, leaving 33.51 profit and about 30.01% margin.
The margin definition follows Shopify’s explanation of profit reports. This calculator adds the optional costs you enter. For the difference between margin and markup, see Toronto Metropolitan University’s worked comparison.
Keep the inputs consistent
Use one currency with two decimal places, and enter amounts up to 10,000,000. Use the price after discounts and exclude sales tax collected for a tax authority. The fee percentage applies only to the entered selling price; this is not a marketplace fee lookup. Check your provider’s actual fee base and rounding rules.
If the item itself costs nothing, enter zero. In target mode, a positive price of at least 0.01 is needed to calculate a margin. The resulting margin may exceed your target, especially for very small amounts. Results include only entered costs and are not financial or tax advice.
Use the Discount calculator to check a reduced price, then enter that price here to see its effect on margin.