Profit Margin & Markup

This profit margin calculator is built for shop owners, makers, resellers and anyone setting a price. In the Margin & markup tab, type any two of the five values (cost, selling price, profit, margin or markup) and the other three are worked out instantly. Know your cost and the margin you want? Type those two. Know the price and the markup? That works too. The boxes you typed are highlighted and the worked-out ones are labelled, so it is always clear which is which.

Price from target turns a cost and a target margin or markup into a selling price, then rounds it up to a price that looks right on a shelf, such as one ending in .99. A ladder shows the price at eight common margins side by side. Bulk price list does the same for a whole range: paste item names and costs from a spreadsheet and get a full price list to copy or download as a CSV file.

If you charge GST or VAT, pick whether your prices include tax or have it added on. Margins are always measured on the price before tax, since tax belongs to the government, not to you. A plain explainer of margin versus markup, with the conversion formulas and a quick reference table, sits below the calculator. Everything runs in your browser.

1. Pick your currency and, if you charge it, the GST / VAT setting and rate.
2. In Margin & markup, type any two values, for example the cost and the selling price. The other three fill in straight away.
3. Switch to Price from target to turn a cost and a target margin into a selling price, and choose how to round it.
4. Use Bulk price list to paste many items with their costs and set one target for all of them.
5. Press Copy result, Copy table or Download CSV to take the figures with you.

• Solves from any pair of cost, selling price, profit, margin and markup, including profit plus margin.
• Instant margin-to-markup conversion when you only type one percentage.
• Selling price from a target margin or a target markup, with the formula shown.
• Price rounding up to .99, .95, a whole number or the next multiple of 5, with the real margin after rounding.
• A price ladder for the same cost at margins from 10% to 70%.
• Bulk pricing for up to 5,000 items pasted from Excel, Google Sheets or plain text, with totals and an average margin.
• GST and VAT support for prices that include tax or have it added, with one-tap rates for Australia, New Zealand, the UK, India and Canada.
• CSV download and copy buttons that paste neatly into a spreadsheet.
• Losses shown clearly when the price is below the cost.

• Margin can never reach 100%, because that would mean the item cost nothing. Markup has no ceiling: a 300% markup is a 75% margin.
• A common mistake is adding a markup percentage when you meant a margin. Adding 30% to a cost of 70 gives 91, which is only a 23% margin. To earn a 30% margin you need to charge 100.
• Type costs before tax if you can claim the tax back on your purchases, which most registered businesses can.
• Rounding always goes up, so your real margin is never below your target. Check the actual margin figure after rounding.
• For the bulk list, the cost should be the last number on each line. A line like “Pack of 6, 4.50” reads the cost as 4.50.