Add your costs, choose your profit, and see a suggested selling price.
Works for handmade goods, resale inventory and digital products alike.
This calculator turns the real cost of making one item into a selling price you can defend. It adds materials, packaging, your making time, a share of overhead and any selling fees before applying the margin you want.
It suits makers, e-commerce sellers, food producers and anyone selling a physical or digital product who suspects their current price is a guess.
The recommended price is the lowest price that covers every cost you entered and still leaves the margin you asked for. Profit per unit shows the dollars you keep from one sale.
If the price looks high for your market, the number is telling you something about your costs or volume rather than settling the question. Try a higher monthly unit estimate, a lower margin, or cheaper packaging and compare the results.
A candle maker enters $4.20 of wax and wick, $1.10 of packaging, 15 minutes of labor at $24 an hour, $600 of monthly overhead across 300 units and 3% payment fees. At a 40% margin the calculator suggests a price near $21.
Illustrative example only — the numbers are fictional and not a recommendation.
Packaging, shipping supplies and transaction fees are the costs most often left out. Add them before you set your margin, or that margin quietly disappears at checkout.
Good pricing works in one direction: costs first, then fees, then profit. Add up everything one unit costs you, add the slice of your monthly overhead that unit should carry, then work out the price that leaves your target profit after payment fees are taken out. Guessing from a competitor's price tag skips all three steps.
Notice that you can't simply add 40% to your cost to get a 40% margin. Margin is measured against the selling price, so the calculator divides rather than multiplies — that's why the recommended price is higher than a naive markup.
Markup compares profit to your cost. Margin compares profit to your selling price. They describe the same dollar of profit from different angles, and confusing them is the fastest way to under-price.
A product that costs $10 and sells for $15 carries a 50% markup but only a 33% margin. The calculator shows both so you can talk to suppliers in markup and to your accountant in margin.
Say a candle costs $8.00 in materials, $4.00 in labor, $2.00 in packaging, $1.00 in shipping supplies and $0.50 in other costs — $15.50 of direct cost. With $500 of monthly overhead across 100 units, another $5.00 is allocated per unit, so the true cost is $20.50.
Targeting a 40% margin with a 3% + $0.30 payment fee, the recommended price is roughly $36.49. After fees of about $1.39, you keep around $14.60 per candle — about $1,460 of profit on 100 sales. Load the sample numbers above to see it live.
Yes. If you don't pay yourself for making time, your profit is really just wages in disguise. Pick an hourly rate you'd be happy to pay someone else and use it.
Many physical-product businesses target 30–50%, while digital products often go far higher because there's little cost per unit. Start with 40% and adjust to what your market accepts.
No — an honest estimate is enough. Try a low, medium and high number to see how sensitive your price is to volume.
No. Tax is collected on top of your price and passed on, so it isn't part of your cost or profit calculation here.
No. Every calculation runs in your browser. Nothing is stored, sent or shared.