Find out exactly how much you need to sell before you start making money. Enter your fixed costs, your price, and your cost per sale, and see your break-even point in units and revenue.
Estimate only — a planning tool, not a forecast. Assumes steady prices and costs; real months vary.
Your break-even point is the amount of sales where your money coming in exactly covers your money going out — zero profit, zero loss. Every sale after that starts making real profit. It's the single most useful number for setting goals and pricing.
Break-even sales = Fixed costs ÷ (Price − Variable cost)
The bottom part — price minus the cost of one sale — is your contribution margin: how much each sale contributes toward covering your fixed costs. The bigger it is, the fewer sales you need.
Break-even is the sales volume at which revenue exactly covers total cost, so profit is zero. Below it you lose money on every additional day open; above it, each sale drops profit to the bottom line. The formula is break-even units = fixed costs ÷ (price per unit − variable cost per unit). The denominator — price minus variable cost — is your contribution margin: what each sale contributes toward covering fixed costs.
Fixed costs do not move with sales in the short run: rent, insurance, salaried staff, software. Variable costs scale with each unit: materials, payment-processing fees, direct labor per job. Miscategorizing a cost is the most common break-even error — for example, treating a salaried manager as variable makes break-even look far lower than it is.
A workshop has $4,000 a month in fixed costs, sells a product for $50, and spends $20 per unit in materials and fees. Contribution margin is $30. Break-even is $4,000 ÷ $30 = 134 units a month — about 5 a day. Want a $2,000 profit instead of zero? Treat the target profit like extra fixed cost: ($4,000 + $2,000) ÷ $30 = 200 units. That reframing — profit as a cost you must cover — is what turns break-even from a trivia number into a monthly sales target.
Run break-even before launching a product, signing a lease, or hiring — anything that changes fixed costs moves the line. When margins are thin, notice how sensitive break-even is: a small price increase raises contribution margin and lowers required volume far more than cutting costs usually can.
Divide your fixed costs by your contribution margin (price minus variable cost per sale). The result is the number of sales you need to cover all your costs. Multiply by price to get break-even revenue. This calculator does both.
It's what's left from one sale after its own direct costs — the amount that "contributes" to covering your fixed overhead and then profit. A $150 job that costs $60 in materials and labor has a $90 contribution margin.
It turns a vague "am I making money?" into a concrete target: hit this many sales and you're profitable. It also tells you fast whether a price is even viable — if break-even is more sales than you can realistically make, the price is too low.
Related: job estimate calculator · profit margin calculator · Small Business Bookkeeping template.
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Yes. The Break-Even Calculator is completely free, runs in your browser, and never asks for a signup, email, or download. Enter your numbers and the result updates instantly.
It uses standard formulas and recalculates the moment you change a value, so the math is exact for the inputs you enter. Treat the result as a reliable planning estimate; for decisions with legal or tax consequences, confirm the figures with a qualified professional.
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Last reviewed: September 2026. Free to use, no signup — Break-Even Calculator by ToolWise Digital.
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