Enter your cost and selling price to see your markup and profit margin.
Pick what you already know, and we'll work out the rest — profit, margin and markup, side by side.
This calculator converts between cost, price, margin and markup so you can see what a sale really keeps. Enter any two of those figures and it fills in the rest.
It is useful for anyone checking a supplier quote, sanity-testing a price list, or working out what a discount does to the money left over.
Margin is profit as a share of the price you charge; markup is the same profit measured against your cost. The margin figure is the one to compare across products, because it answers what share of each dollar of revenue you keep.
A negative result means the price is below cost. Treat these numbers as arithmetic about the figures you entered, not as tax or accounting advice.
A retailer buys an item for $18 and sells it for $30. Profit is $12, which is a 40% margin and a 66.7% markup — the same sale described two different ways.
Illustrative example only — the numbers are fictional and not a recommendation.
Markup and margin are never the same percentage. Adding 40% to a cost gives a 28.6% margin, so decide which one you are quoting before you commit.
Margin and markup describe the same dollar of profit from two different starting points. Margin measures profit against the selling price. Markup measures the same profit against the cost. Because the selling price is always bigger than the cost, markup always looks like the larger number.
Mixing them up is the single most common pricing mistake. If you add 30% to your cost believing you've secured a 30% margin, you've actually got a 23% margin — and you may have quietly given away a third of your intended profit.
Notice that the margin formula divides while the markup formula multiplies. That single difference is why the two numbers never match.
Every row below starts from the same $10 cost, so you can see how margin and markup drift apart as prices rise.
| Cost | Price | Profit | Margin | Markup |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $10 | $12.50 | $2.50 | 20% | 25% |
| $10 | $15.00 | $5.00 | 33.3% | 50% |
| $10 | $16.67 | $6.67 | 40% | 66.7% |
| $10 | $20.00 | $10.00 | 50% | 100% |
| $10 | $25.00 | $15.00 | 60% | 150% |
Cost and selling price. An item costs $20.00 and sells for $35.00. Profit is $15.00, the margin is 42.9% ($15 ÷ $35) and the markup is 75% ($15 ÷ $20).
Cost and desired margin. The same $20.00 item with a 40% target margin needs a price of $20 ÷ 0.60 = $33.33, giving $13.33 of profit and a 66.7% markup.
Cost and desired markup. Adding a 75% markup to $20.00 gives $35.00 — the same price as the first example, and a reminder that a 75% markup is only a 42.9% margin. Load the sample numbers above to see each mode live.
Use margin when you're deciding whether your business is healthy, because it tells you what share of every dollar of revenue you keep. Use markup when you're setting a price from a known cost, which is how most suppliers and buyers talk.
A 100% margin would mean your cost is zero. As you push a desired margin towards 100%, the required selling price rises towards infinity, so the calculator asks for a margin below 100%.
Yes. A 200% markup simply means you sell for three times your cost. Markup has no ceiling, which is another reason it's easy to confuse with margin.
If you want a true picture, yes. Either add fees into the cost field here, or use the product pricing calculator, which handles percentage and fixed fees separately.
No. Every calculation runs in your browser. Nothing is stored, sent or shared.