Pricing and Break-Even Simulator

Work out a selling price that survives fees, shipping, ads and discounts — with every formula shown.

Runs in your browser. Nothing is uploaded — your input is processed on this device and discarded when you close the tab.

Simulate a price

Enter what one sale really costs you. The simulator works out the rest — and prints the formula beside every result, so you can check the arithmetic instead of trusting it. Everything updates as you type, and the full set of inputs is stored in the page URL so a simulation can be shared or bookmarked.

Currency (display only) USD — US dollar ($) EUR — Euro (€) GBP — British pound (£) PKR — Pakistani rupee (Rs) INR — Indian rupee (₹) AED — UAE dirham CAD — Canadian dollar ($) AUD — Australian dollar ($)

The selector changes the currency symbol only. No live exchange rates are used and amounts are never converted — enter figures in one currency throughout.

Unit cost (product / materials per unit)

Shipping cost per order

Payment fee % (e.g. card processor)

Payment fixed fee per order

Platform / marketplace fee %

Fee presets — typical published standard rates; your own numbers always override them:

Stripe — 2.9% + 0.30 PayPal — 3.49% + 0.49 Etsy — 3% + 0.25, platform 6.5% eBay — platform ≈13.25% + 0.30/order Amazon referral — platform 15%

Standard headline rates published by each provider, checked October 2026 (fixed amounts in USD — convert for other currencies). Real fees vary by country, category, volume and account type, and marketplaces add further charges (listing, fulfilment, ads) that a single percentage cannot capture. Treat a preset as a starting point, then replace it with the figures on your own payout statement.

Ad cost per sale (acquisition cost)

Discount % (typical promotion)

Fixed monthly costs (rent, tools, salaries)

Expected units sold per month

My prices include sales tax / VAT

If ticked, tax is backed out of the price before any margin is calculated — you never earn margin on money collected for the tax authority.

What do you want to set?

I have a price — show me the margin

I have a target margin — show me the price

I have a markup — show me the price

Selling price (before discount)

Load sample product Copy share link Export scenarios (CSV) Chart PNG Print view

Results — every figure with its formula

Result	Formula	Value
Selling price	Your price — or solved from the target margin / markup below	—
Amount paid per order	price × (1 − discount %)	—
Tax included in that amount	paid × rate ÷ (1 + rate) — only when “prices include tax” is on	—
Net revenue per order	paid − tax	—
Payment fee per order	paid × payment fee % + fixed fee per order	—
Platform fee per order	paid × platform fee %	—
Profit per unit	net revenue − payment fee − platform fee − unit cost − shipping − ad cost	—
Margin %	profit per unit ÷ net revenue × 100	—
Markup %	profit per unit ÷ total per-unit cost × 100 (total cost = paid − profit)	—
Contribution margin	profit per unit, fixed monthly costs excluded (money, then % of net revenue)	—
Break-even units / month	fixed monthly costs ÷ contribution per unit, rounded up	—
Break-even revenue / month	break-even units × amount paid per order	—
Break-even ROAS	amount paid ÷ profit per unit before ad cost — ad campaigns must beat this return on ad spend to break even	—
Most you can pay to acquire a sale	profit per unit + current ad cost per sale (the break-even ad cost)	—
Monthly profit at expected volume	profit per unit × units − fixed monthly costs	—

Assumptions, stated plainly: percentage fees are charged on the amount the customer actually pays (after discount, including tax when tax is on). Margin is measured on net (ex-tax) revenue. If your platform calculates fees differently, adjust the percentages until the fee rows match a real payout statement.

Break-even chart

Scenarios — compare three futures side by side

Override the price, monthly volume and ad cost for any scenario; leave a field blank to inherit the main simulation. The comparison updates as you type.

Scenario A

Name Price override Units / month Ad cost per sale

Scenario B

Name Price override Units / month Ad cost per sale

Scenario C

Name Price override Units / month Ad cost per sale

Scenario comparison — export it with the CSV button above

Metric	Conservative	Expected	Optimistic

Quantity-discount tiers

Tier discounts stack on top of the base discount above: a customer in a tier pays price × (1 − base discount) × (1 − tier % off), and every fee is recalculated on that lower amount. The tier that applies at a given quantity is the one with the largest minimum quantity the order reaches — an order of exactly the minimum qualifies.

Add a tier

Effective price and profit per tier

Orders of	Tier discount	Customer pays	Profit per unit (margin)

How to use the Pricing Simulator

1. Enter the true cost of one sale. Unit cost, shipping, both parts of the payment fee (the percentage and the fixed per-order charge — most sellers forget the fixed part), the platform percentage, and what one sale costs you in advertising. Add your fixed monthly costs and a realistic monthly volume.
2. Set the tax position honestly. If your shelf prices include VAT or sales tax, tick the box and set the rate. The simulator backs the tax out first, because margin calculated on tax-inclusive money is margin you do not actually have.
3. Choose a mode. Start from a price and read the margin, start from a target margin and read the price you must charge, or start from a markup if that is the language your supplier or category uses. The results table shows the same figures either way, each with its formula.
4. Read the break-even lines before the profit line. Break-even units tell you the minimum the business must sell to cover fixed costs; break-even ROAS tells your ad campaigns the return they must beat. If the panel says “never breaks even”, no volume saves the product at that price — a cost or the price has to move.
5. Stress-test with scenarios. Put a pessimistic, an expected and an optimistic case side by side — a lower price with dearer ads, a higher price with more volume — and look at monthly profit, not just margin percentage. Then add quantity tiers if you sell wholesale or bundles.
6. Share or save the simulation. The URL updates as you work and encodes every input, so Copy share link hands the exact simulation to a partner or your future self. Export the scenario table as CSV for a spreadsheet, or print the page for a meeting.

Worked example: a $100 product, costed honestly

The sample product is a mid-priced item sold through a marketplace. Load it with the tool itself and compare your screen with the figures below:

The inputs are: unit cost $45, shipping $10, payment fee 2% plus $1 fixed per order, platform fee 7%, ad cost $10 per sale, no discount, tax off, fixed monthly costs of $2,500 and a price of $100. The results, step by step: the payment fee is 2% of $100 plus the $1 fixed charge, which is $3.00; the platform takes 7% of $100, which is $7.00. Profit per unit is therefore $100 − $3 − $7 − $45 − $10 − $10 = $25.00. Margin is $25 ÷ $100 = 25%, while markup is $25 ÷ $75 of total per-unit cost = 33.33% — the same profit wearing two different labels, which is why confusing them is so expensive. Break-even is $2,500 ÷ $25 = 100 units a month, or $10,000 of revenue. Before advertising, each sale contributes $35, so the break-even ROAS is $100 ÷ $35 = 2.86×: any campaign returning less than $2.86 of revenue per $1 of spend loses money on this product. At the expected 120 units, monthly profit is $25 × 120 − $2,500 = $500. Now switch the mode to “target margin”, enter 25%, and the simulator solves back to the same $100 price — the two directions agree, which is the check that the formulas are consistent. Finally, tick “prices include tax” on any product to see the tax backed out first: a £120 price at a 20% rate is £100 of net revenue and £20 of tax, never £120 of revenue.

What the Pricing Simulator does, and why it matters

Most products are not killed by a lack of sales. They are killed by a price that was set by looking at competitors, rounding to a pleasing number, and discovering months later that after the card processor, the marketplace, the courier and the ad platform each took their share, nothing was left. The arithmetic that prevents this is not advanced — it is a dozen lines of subtraction and division — but it is arithmetic nobody does completely, because the costs live in different places: the fee schedule in a PDF, the ad cost in a dashboard, the shipping rate in a courier contract, the fixed costs in a bank statement. This simulator’s first job is simply to force all of them onto one page, attached to one product, at the same time.

Its second job is to keep the vocabulary honest. Margin and markup are the most reliably confused pair of numbers in small-business pricing: margin divides profit by the selling price, markup divides it by the cost, so the same $25 of profit is a 25% margin and a 33.33% markup on the worked example above. A seller who promises a partner “30%” without saying which one has created a dispute, not a deal. The simulator shows both, side by side, each with its formula printed next to it, and the solving modes respect the difference — a target-margin price and a target-markup price are different prices, and the tool will not pretend otherwise.

The break-even figures turn those per-unit truths into operating targets. Break-even units convert fixed monthly costs into a single number of sales that separates losing from surviving; break-even revenue states the same line in money. Break-even ROAS does the equivalent job for advertising, expressing the margin before ad spend as the return a campaign must exceed — the difference between “this campaign feels expensive” and “this campaign returns 2.4× against a 2.86× break-even, so it loses money on every order”. Scenarios then stop the plan depending on one forecast: a conservative, expected and optimistic case, with different prices, volumes and ad costs, show whether the product survives the bad month as well as enjoys the good one.

Two disciplines run through the design. The first is that every formula is displayed beside its result, on the page and again in the CSV export, so any figure can be audited with a pocket calculator — a number you cannot check is an opinion. The second is that impossible requests fail loudly: a target margin of 100% or more, or one that the percentage fees alone already consume, produces an explanation rather than a fantasy price of several thousand percent, and a product whose per-unit contribution is zero or negative is labelled “never breaks even” instead of dividing by a loss. Pricing is a chain of small, checkable claims; this tool’s job is to make each link visible before the market tests it for you.

Common errors and limitations

• “No price can deliver that margin.” The target margin is impossible with the current fees: at a 100% margin nothing would be left for any cost at all, and long before that, percentage payment and platform fees plus tax consume the whole margin. Lower the target, or reduce a fee or cost, and the simulator will solve a price again.
• “Never breaks even.” Each sale contributes zero or less after variable costs, so higher volume increases the loss instead of covering fixed costs. The warning panel states the per-sale loss. Raise the price, cut a per-unit cost, or accept that the product is a deliberate loss-leader — the tool reports the maths, not the strategy.
• Margin and markup are not interchangeable. A 25% margin needs a 33.33% markup on the same product. If a marketplace, partner or accountant quotes you a percentage, ask which one it is before typing it in.
• Fees are modelled on the amount paid. Payment and platform percentages are charged here on the discounted, tax-inclusive amount the customer pays, which matches the major card processors and marketplaces. If your platform charges on the pre-discount or ex-tax amount, nudge the percentages so the fee rows equal a real payout.
• The currency selector does not convert anything. It changes the display symbol only; no live exchange rates are used. Mixing inputs from two currencies in one simulation produces confident nonsense.
• Returns, refunds and chargebacks are not a separate input. If returns are material, fold their average cost into the unit or ad cost per sale — for example, a 5% return rate on a $100 item with $12 of return handling adds about $0.60 to the effective cost of every sale.
• Tier discounts stack on the base discount. That is the stated rule in the tiers section. If your store instead replaces the base discount at tier quantities, set the base discount to 0 and let the tiers carry the whole reduction.
• This is a planning model, not accounting. It treats costs as constant per unit and ignores stock financing, payment timing, tax deductibility of fees and volume pricing from suppliers. Use it to set and defend a price; use your accounts to confirm what actually happened.

Frequently asked questions

How it works

Open the Pricing Simulator page and enter the numbers behind a product: what it costs you to buy or make, what you pay in platform and payment fees, what shipping costs, what you expect to spend on advertising per order, and any discount you plan to offer. The simulator then works out the selling price you would need, the profit on each unit, the margin as a percentage, and how many units you must sell to break even — with every formula shown next to its result, so you can check the maths rather than trust a black box. You can compare up to three scenarios side by side, for example three different prices, and model quantity-discount tiers. A break-even chart and a break-even ROAS figure show what your advertising must return. All of this runs in your browser, and nothing you enter is stored.

Another worked example

Alex, a fictional seller of handmade candles, enters a unit cost of $8, packaging of $2, a platform fee of 10%, payment fees of 3%, and $4 shipping per order. At a $25 selling price, the simulator shows a profit per unit of about $6 after fees and costs, a margin near 24%, and a break-even point Alex can compare against a lower $20 price and a higher $30 price in the scenario view. The $20 scenario barely breaks even once advertising is included, while the $30 scenario survives it comfortably but may sell fewer units. Alex now has three honest pictures to choose between, instead of a single hopeful price picked from the cost alone.

More limitations to know

The simulator's outputs are estimates, not financial advice, and they are only as good as the numbers entered. A forgotten fee, an optimistic advertising cost, or a discount applied to every order will flatter the result. Break-even figures assume your costs stay steady as volume grows, which is not always true — suppliers, shipping rates, and ad costs all move. The tool models money, not demand: it cannot tell you whether customers will actually buy at a given price, how competitors will react, or how returns and refunds will eat into profit. Use it to test whether a price can work at all, then validate the price against real sales before committing stock or ad spend to it.

More frequently asked questions

Why does the simulator show formulas instead of just answers?

So you can audit the result. If a figure looks surprising, the formula next to it shows exactly which inputs produced it, and which input to question first.

Can I compare more than one price at once?

Yes. The scenario view compares up to three sets of inputs side by side, which is the fastest way to see how a price change moves profit, margin, and break-even together.

What does break-even ROAS actually tell me?

It tells you the minimum return your advertising must earn per dollar spent for a campaign to cover its own costs at your current price and fees. Earning less than that figure means the ads lose money on every order.

Should I include tax in my inputs?

If tax comes out of your revenue or is charged on top of your costs, yes — leaving it out will overstate your margin. The tax toggle exists precisely because its effect is often larger than sellers expect.

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