Discount Calculator
Work out the sale price and how much you save on any discount, with optional stacked deals and sales tax.
- Free, no account
- No watermark
- No usage limit
About the Discount Calculator
That "extra 20% off already-reduced prices" tag never saves what the two numbers make it sound like, and plenty of stores are counting on that. Stack a 20% markdown with a 10% coupon and your gut fills in 30% off. You really pay 28 percent, because the second cut only comes off the smaller price left after the first one, not the original sticker. The gap looks trivial on a receipt and it adds up fast on a full cart.
Most basic discount calculators make this worse by not even giving you a place to enter that second discount. They take one price and one percentage and stop, which leaves you adding the coupons in your head, and that's exactly where the math goes sideways. This one has a field for the second cut and stacks it the honest way, by multiplying what's left after each discount instead of adding the percentages together. Type in the price, tap a preset or key in your own percent, and the amount saved and the real final price update as you type, with tax folded in if you fill that field.
How to use it
- Enter the original price, the full amount on the tag before anything comes off.
- Pick your discount. Tap a preset (10, 20, 25, 30, or 50 percent) or type any number into the custom box under them.
- Got a deal that stacks, like a coupon on top of a sale? Put the second discount in its own field. It comes off the already-reduced price, which is how "extra X% off" promotions really work.
- Add your local sales tax if you want the out-the-door figure. It's charged on the discounted price, not the original.
- Read the panel below. It shows what you save, the price after the discount, any tax added, and the final price you'll actually pay.
Leave a field blank and you get a quiet dash instead of an error, so nothing reads as broken while you're mid-entry. Percentages cap at 100, since nothing sells for less than free, and a negative number just counts as zero.
Why two discounts never add up
Two discounts feel like they should add together. They don't, and that gap is where the two-sign trick lives. A 20% discount leaves you paying 80% of the price. Put an extra 10% on top and that second cut works on the 80, not the original, so it only shaves off 8. You land at 72% of where you started, a true 28% off.
If you want to run it by hand, the trick is to multiply the leftovers. 20% off leaves 0.8, an extra 10% leaves 0.9, and 0.8 times 0.9 is 0.72. Order makes no difference, 10 then 20 lands on the exact same 72 cents on the dollar. The gap is tiny at small percentages (two 10%-off coupons come to 19% off, not 20) and it grows fast as the numbers climb. Stack 30 and 20 on a $200 order and the tool lands you at $112, which works out to 44% off, well short of the 50 the two signs seem to promise.
None of this is a reason to skip stacked deals, that's how end-of-season clearance gets genuinely cheap. It's just worth knowing the real total before you decide a sale is worth the drive.
The real out-the-door price
In most of the US, sales tax comes off after the discount, figured on the reduced amount, which works in your favor. Knock a $60 item down to $48 and the 8% tax is charged on the $48, so a bigger markdown trims your tax bill a little on top of the price. Drop your rate into the tax field and the final number already has it built in. Rates swing a lot between states and even neighboring cities, so use whatever applies where you're actually standing, not a rough national guess.
Want to ballpark before you pull your phone out? 10% off is just the price with the decimal nudged one spot to the left, and you can build the rest from there. From that number, 20% is it doubled, 5% is it halved, and 25% is a straight quarter off the price. Close enough to tell whether something deserves a second look, then you let the calculator handle the cents your head skips, the $47.99 tags where 30% off comes to $14.40 and change.
Frequently asked questions
Is two coupons ever worse than one bigger discount?
Often, yes. A single 30% off beats a 20 plus an extra 10, since the stack only reaches 28. If a store makes you choose between one large code and two smaller ones, don't assume more coupons win. Enter them both ways here and compare the two final prices before you pick.
Does the order I apply the discounts in matter?
For two percentages, no. 20 then 10 and 10 then 20 both land on 72 cents on the dollar. It only starts to matter once a flat-dollar coupon is in the mix, since taking $10 off before or after a percentage gives you different totals. Most stores apply the percentage first and the dollar coupon last, so match that order if you're checking their math.
What if my coupon is a flat dollar amount, not a percent?
The tool runs on percentages, so a "$15 off" coupon isn't something you type into a discount field. That kind is easy though, just subtract it from the final number yourself once the percentages and tax are done. Do the percent discounts here, read the final price, then knock the flat coupon off that.
How do I tell if a store's "% off" claim is real?
Divide the sale price by the original. A $100 jacket marked "50% off" at $60 is really 40% off, because 60 divided by 100 is 0.6. Stores sometimes pad the "original" so the markdown looks steeper than it is, and that one division catches the trick. If the higher price never actually sold, the percent on the sign is fiction.
Can I use it for a markup or a price increase?
No, it only takes prices down. Anything over 100% is read as a full discount and a negative counts as zero, so it can't add to a price. It's built for what you save on a sale, not for putting a margin on top of a cost.
Does it upload anything I type?
No. Nothing you enter leaves your device, there's no upload and nothing gets saved. The math runs right in the page, so once it has loaded you can keep using it with the signal off, which is handy deep in a store where the reception dies.