Set a price that actually makes money. Enter your cost and the markup you want, and see the selling price, profit per unit, and your profit margin.
Cost-plus pricing covers your cost plus a set markup. It doesn't account for demand or competitors, so check the price against your market too.
You take your unit cost and add a fixed markup percentage. A $50 cost with a 40% markup becomes a $70 price — a $20 profit per unit. Note that markup and margin aren't the same: a 40% markup here is about a 28.6% margin (profit ÷ price).
Price = cost × (1 + markup %)
Cost-plus is the oldest pricing method there is: work out what one unit costs you, add a fixed percentage on top, and that is the price. The calculator multiplies cost by (1 + markup) to get the price, subtracts cost to get profit per unit, and divides profit by price to get the margin. Its virtue is that it can never price below cost by accident, as long as the cost figure is complete. Its blind spot is that it looks only inward: it does not know what competitors charge, what the customer thinks the product is worth, or whether demand falls off a cliff at $69.99. A cost-plus price is a floor with a cushion, not a market price.
Unit cost $50, markup 40%. Price = $50 × (1 + 0.40) = $70. Profit per unit = $70 − $50 = $20. Margin = $20 ÷ $70 = 28.6%. If the goal was a 40% margin — the number most people actually have in mind — the price needed is $50 ÷ (1 − 0.40) = $83.33, a $13.33 gap on every unit. On 500 units a year that is $6,667 of profit that never existed because two words were used interchangeably.
"Cost per unit" has to be the fully loaded cost, and most first attempts are not. For a maker it is materials, packaging, the share of labour that went into that unit, and the inbound shipping on the materials. For a reseller it is the purchase price plus freight, duties and any platform or payment fee that scales with the sale. Overhead — rent, software, insurance — is not in the unit cost, which is why the markup has to be large enough to cover it: a 40% markup on a product with 30% of revenue going to overhead leaves very little. A rule of thumb used by many small manufacturers is that markup must cover overhead as a share of sales plus the profit you want; below that it is a subsidy.
Forgetting fees: a $70 item sold on a marketplace that takes 6.5% plus payment processing nets closer to $63, and the margin quietly drops from 28.6% to about 20%. Pricing from an old cost: last year's material price with this year's markup. Rounding to a "nice" price without recomputing the margin — $70 becomes $65 and nobody notices the margin fell to 23%. And the one this page exists to prevent: reading the 40% markup as a 40% margin.
The moment you have more than a handful of products, a single-unit calculator hides the question that matters: which items earn and which are being carried. A price list with cost, fees, price, margin and units sold per line shows it in one glance and recomputes when a cost changes. The Small Business Bookkeeping spreadsheet keeps that alongside the ledger; the margin ↔ markup converter gives you the exact markup for any margin target, and the markup calculator runs the same arithmetic from a target price backwards.
Setting your price by adding a fixed markup percentage on top of what a product costs you. It's simple and guarantees a margin, as long as your cost figure is complete.
Markup is profit as a percentage of cost; margin is profit as a percentage of price. A 40% markup equals a ~28.6% margin. This tool shows both.
Related: markup calculator · profit margin calculator · gross profit calculator.
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Yes. The Cost-Plus Pricing 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 — Cost-Plus Pricing Calculator by ToolWise Digital.
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