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Profit margin & markup calculator

Margin and markup are not the same number, and confusing them is one of the most common ways small businesses underprice themselves.

Note how different the margin and markup percentages are for the same product.

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Change the rates, the labels and the maths to match your business, then export it as a single HTML file you paste into your site. Free, no account, and it keeps working whatever happens to us.

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Margin versus markup

Margin is profit as a share of the selling price. Markup is profit as a share of the cost. A product bought for $50 and sold for $100 carries a 50% margin and a 100% markup — the same transaction, two very different numbers.

The mistake that costs real money is applying a target margin as a markup. Wanting a 40% margin and adding 40% to cost produces a 28.6% margin instead, and at volume that gap is the whole business.

Landed cost is the real cost

Unit cost alone flatters your numbers. Payment processing takes 2.9% plus a fixed fee, marketplaces take 5–15%, and shipping is often the largest single line after the product itself.

This calculator works from landed cost — unit cost plus shipping plus percentage fees — which is why its margin figure is usually lower and less comfortable than the one in your head. That's the point.

The break-even line answers the question that actually matters: how many units per month cover your fixed costs. If that number is larger than what you realistically sell, the problem is your price, not your marketing.

Questions

Are fees calculated on the selling price?

Yes — percentage fees apply to what the customer pays, which is how processors and marketplaces charge.

Can I add cost of returns?

Add a percentage field for your return rate and factor it into the landed cost formula.

Can I embed this on my site?

Yes. It's built with the free builder and exports as a single self-contained HTML file.

One file. No subscription. No expiry.

Hosted calculator builders charge $5–$115 a month and stop rendering when you exceed your monthly impressions. This one exports a file that runs on your own site and cannot be switched off.

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