E-commerce

Product Profit Calculator

Profit on one product with every cost entered by hand - fees, shipping, packaging and GST - and margin and markup shown separately.

10 inputs Free, no sign-up

Your figures

What the customer pays, after any discount.

What one unit costs you, landed in your warehouse.

Leave at 1 to work per unit.

What you are charged

The percentage from your own fee statement. Leave at 0 for a direct sale.

Closing, collection or payment fees, as one figure.

Your own costs

Only what comes out of your pocket, not what the marketplace charges.

Box, filler, tape and labels for one order.

Returns, advertising, storage - anything else you want counted per unit.

Tax

Tick this if the price above is what the customer pays including tax.

Most mobile, computer and car accessories are taxed at 18%.

Try an example

Result

Your result

Enter your figures and the result appears here.

Estimates only. Rates, fees and specifications change. Confirm against the official source before you rely on a figure — see our disclaimer.

About this calculator

This is the calculator to open with a payout statement in front of you. Nothing here comes from a rate table: you enter what you were actually charged, so the answer is right for your account rather than right for an average one.

It also does the thing most profit calculators get wrong. If your price includes GST, the tax is taken out before the margin is worked out, because tax you collect and hand over was never your revenue.

How to use this calculator

  1. Enter the price the customer pays and what one unit costs you.
  2. Enter the fee percentage and any fixed fee from your fee statement.
  3. Add what you pay for shipping, packaging and anything else.
  4. If the price includes GST, tick the box and set the rate.
  5. Read the breakdown from the selling price down to the net profit.

The formula

Working from the top down:

Revenue        = Selling price - GST collected (if the price includes it)
Fees           = Revenue x fee% / 100 + fixed fee
Earnings       = Revenue - fees - shipping - packaging - other costs
Net profit     = Earnings - product cost

And the two ratios, which answer different questions:

Margin = Net profit / Revenue      x 100
Markup = Net profit / Product cost x 100

Margin tells you what share of a sale you keep. Markup tells you how much you added on top of a cost. A 50% margin is a 100% markup - they are never the same number, and quoting one while thinking of the other is how products get priced too low.

SymbolMeaningUnit
Revenue The sale excluding any GST collected Rs
Earnings Revenue less every charge except the product Rs
Margin Profit as a share of revenue %
Markup Profit as a share of product cost %

Worked example

A phone case selling at 1,499 including 18% GST, costing 850, with a 15% fee, a 40 fixed fee and 15 of packaging:

Selling price        1,499.00
GST collected         -228.66   (1,499 - 1,499 x 100 / 118)
Revenue              1,270.34
Marketplace fees      -230.55   (15% of 1,270.34, plus 40)
Packaging              -15.00
Seller earnings      1,024.79
Product cost          -850.00
Net profit             174.79   (13.76% margin, 20.56% markup)

Note how much smaller the profit is than the 649 difference between price and cost suggests. That gap is the whole reason this calculator exists.

Notes and limits

Every figure here is one you entered. Nothing is looked up, so nothing goes stale - which makes this the most dependable calculator on the site, and the one to fall back on whenever a marketplace changes its pricing.

  • Input tax credit on your purchases is not netted off here. The GST profit calculator handles that properly.
  • Returns are not modelled. Add an allowance under other costs if you want one.
  • Costs are treated as per unit; a per-order fee on a multi-unit order is charged once.

What this calculation assumes

  • Every fee is the figure you entered, not a published marketplace rate.
  • GST, where it applies, is taken out of the price before profit is worked out.
  • No input tax credit is netted off; use the GST profit calculator for that.

Frequently asked questions

Why is my margin lower than the difference between price and cost?

Because the difference between price and cost is not profit. Fees, shipping, packaging and, if your price includes it, GST all come out of that gap first. On a typical marketplace sale they account for a quarter to a third of the listed price.

Should the price include GST or not?

Enter the price exactly as the customer sees it, and tick the box if that price includes tax. The calculator then removes the tax before working out the margin, because tax you collect and pass on is not income.

What counts as other costs?

Anything you want charged against the unit: advertising, a returns allowance, storage, or a share of a monthly platform fee. Spreading a fixed monthly cost across expected units is a reasonable way to see whether a product carries its weight.

Why show both margin and markup?

Because sellers are quoted one and think of the other. A supplier talking about a 40% markup and a marketplace report showing a 40% margin are describing quite different amounts of money.

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