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cost, price (one product per line)Margin = profit ÷ revenue. Markup = profit ÷ cost. A 40% margin is NOT the same as 40% markup. Estimates only — not financial advice.
Every business owner needs to answer three questions about every product: how much money am I actually making, what share of the price is profit, and what should I charge to hit my target? Our free Profit Margin Calculator answers all three in seconds. Enter your cost and selling price to get profit in dollars, profit margin percentage, and markup percentage — or work backwards from a target margin to find the selling price you need. It is fast, free, and runs entirely in your browser, so your pricing data never leaves your device.
Whether you run an online store, a freelance service, or a small manufacturing line, confusing margin with markup is one of the most expensive mistakes in business. They sound alike, they are calculated differently, and mixing them up means you charge too little. This tool keeps them straight and shows you the formulas behind every number. As with all financial tools here, results are estimates for planning purposes only — not financial advice.
Both margin and markup measure profitability, but they use different bases — and that difference changes everything.
Notice that markup is always higher than margin for the same sale. This is exactly where businesses go wrong: a manager who wants a "40% margin" but applies a 40% markup to a $60 cost gets a price of $84 — and an actual margin of only 28.6% ($24 ÷ $84). That is more than ten percentage points of profit left on the table, on every single sale. Our calculator shows both numbers side by side so this mistake cannot happen.
Enter what the product costs you and what you sell it for. The tool returns your profit in dollars, your margin percentage, and your markup percentage, with the formulas shown so you can double-check the math. This is the mode for auditing your current prices: paste in a few products and see which ones are actually earning their keep.
Enter your cost and the margin percentage you want, and the tool computes the selling price that achieves it. It also runs the reverse: enter revenue and a margin to find the maximum cost you can afford. This mode is built for pricing decisions — launching a new product, responding to a supplier price increase, or deciding whether a discount is affordable. Need the underlying percentage math explained? Our Percentage Calculator breaks it down step by step.
Pricing one product is easy; pricing two hundred is not. The batch table mode lets you paste lines of "cost,price" — one product per line — and the calculator computes profit, margin, and markup for every row at once. Sort mentally by the margin column and the weak products jump out immediately: the ones with thin margins that a supplier increase or a sale discount would push into the red. Copy the results with one click into a spreadsheet for further analysis.
Example 1 — the basics. You import phone cases at $8 each and sell them at $20. Profit = $12. Margin = 12 ÷ 20 = 60%. Markup = 12 ÷ 8 = 150%. Healthy numbers — but watch what a "small" discount does: sell at $15 and the margin drops to 46.7%. Discounts eat margins faster than intuition suggests, which is why checking them here first is worth the ten seconds.
Example 2 — reverse pricing. Your handmade candles cost $6 in materials and you want a 55% margin. Required price = cost ÷ (1 − margin) = 6 ÷ 0.45 = $13.33. Price at $13.33 and every sale delivers exactly the margin you planned — rounding to $13.99 gives you a small bonus cushion.
Example 3 — the supplier increase. A supplier raises your cost from $40 to $46 and you refuse to move your $80 price. Your margin falls from 50% to 42.5% — a 7.5-point hit. To restore the 50% margin you must raise the price to $92. These are the conversations the calculator makes painless: bring the numbers, not guesses.
It depends entirely on the industry. Grocery stores run on razor-thin 2-5% margins at enormous volume; software companies can exceed 70% because each extra sale costs almost nothing; restaurants often target 10-15% after all costs. Compare yourself to businesses like yours, not to headlines. And remember this tool models gross margin on the product itself — rent, salaries, marketing, and taxes still come out of that number before you reach true net profit.
This calculator works with the numbers you give it: direct cost and selling price. It does not know your overhead, shipping, payment-processing fees, returns, or taxes — all of which turn gross margin into a smaller net reality. It also cannot tell you what customers will pay; the "right" price is where your math meets the market. Use it to understand your pricing structure precisely, then validate against real sales data. Nothing here is financial advice — it is arithmetic, and honest arithmetic at that.
Margins touch everything in a business. When you are ready to invoice at your new prices, our Invoice Generator creates professional invoices in seconds. Selling internationally? The Currency Converter keeps your costs and prices in the same currency. And when profits start compounding through reinvestment, our Compound Interest Calculator shows what steady reinvested returns become over time.
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What is the difference between margin and markup? Margin is profit as a share of the selling price; markup is profit as a share of cost. A 50% markup equals a 33.3% margin. They are never interchangeable.
Can margin be over 100%? No — margin can never exceed 100% because profit cannot exceed the price itself. Markup, however, can be hundreds of percent. If you see a margin above 100%, a number was entered wrong.
Should I include shipping and fees in cost? Yes, for decisions that matter. Every per-unit cost — shipping, packaging, transaction fees — that you leave out inflates your apparent margin and leads to underpricing.
Is this financial advice? No. The tool performs standard margin arithmetic on your inputs. Pricing strategy, tax treatment, and business decisions should be reviewed with a qualified professional.
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