Markup Calculator
Enter cost and a markup to get the selling price, gross margin, and profit, or work backward from a target price or margin.
- Free, no account
- No watermark
- No usage limit
About the Markup Calculator
Most markup calculators do exactly one thing. You feed them a cost and a markup percent, they hand back a price, and that is where they stop. The number they leave out is the one your accountant and every retail report actually use, the gross margin. This calculator puts markup and margin side by side on every result, and it runs both directions. Tell it the price you want to charge, or the margin you need to hit, and it gives you back the markup that gets you there.
You pick how you want to work. From markup is the classic setup, cost plus a percent gives you the selling price. From a price lets you name what you plan to charge and see the markup and margin it really produces. From a margin is the one people go looking for and rarely find. Give it the margin you need. It returns the markup to apply and the price to charge. Change any input and all four figures update as you type, no button to press.
Everything runs in your browser. Nothing you type is uploaded, there is no account, and there is no usage limit. Press Share to copy a link that reopens the calculator with your exact numbers, or grab the Embed code to drop the live tool onto your own page.
How to use
- Pick a mode across the top: From markup, From a price, or From a margin.
- Enter your cost per unit. Fold in shipping, packaging, and payment fees so the result reflects real profit, not just the wholesale sticker.
- Enter the second number for your mode. That is the markup percent, the price you want to charge, or the margin you are targeting.
- Read all four results together. Selling price, markup, gross margin, and profit per unit sit in one place, so you never convert one into another by hand.
- Tap a preset to jump to a common target, like keystone (double your cost) or a 40 percent margin. The buttons fill the tool for you.
- Press Share to copy a link with your numbers baked in, handy for saving a price or sending a quote a partner can open to the same figures.
Markup and margin are not the same number
Getting these two mixed up is one of the most common pricing mistakes, and it costs a business real money on every sale. Markup and margin both describe the gap between what you pay and what you charge, but they measure it against different things. Markup is your profit measured against your cost. Margin measures that same profit against your selling price instead. The price is always bigger than the cost, so the margin comes out lower than the markup on the same sale.
The gap is easy to see with real numbers. A 40 percent markup on a 50 dollar cost means you add 20 dollars and sell at 70. The markup is 40 percent, measured against the 50 dollar cost. But the gross margin is 20 divided by 70, about 28.6 percent, measured against the 70 dollar price. It is the same 20 dollars of profit shown as two different percentages, depending on what you compare it against.
If a supplier or a spreadsheet talks in margin and you price as if that number were a markup, you undercharge on every unit you sell. Set a 40 percent markup when you actually wanted a 40 percent margin and you land near 28.6 instead, and that shortfall comes off the top of each sale for as long as you keep the price. The plain markup tools hide this by never showing margin at all. Ours shows it right next to the markup so the gap is easy to see.
Working backward from a price or a margin
Pricing rarely starts from a tidy markup percent. More often you already know the price the market will bear, or the margin your business has to clear, and you need to reverse into the markup from there. By hand that means rearranging a formula you half remember or opening a second tab to convert margin into markup, and this tool does that conversion for you so you can skip the whole detour.
From a price, type the number you plan to charge and the tool reports the markup and margin it truly delivers against your cost. That is the fast way to check whether a competitive price still leaves you room.
From a margin is the request the basic calculators simply cannot answer. You set the gross margin you need, say 50 percent, and it returns the markup that reaches it, a straight 100 percent double, plus the price to charge. Wanting a 25 percent margin takes about a 33 percent markup. Push the target to 40 and you need roughly 67. The tool runs the conversion so you stop guessing and stop undercharging.
What markup should you actually use
Ranges swing wildly by trade, so treat these as starting points. High volume grocery and commodity goods often run under 10 percent markup because sheer volume carries them. Standard retail commonly runs 50 to 100 percent. Keystone pricing, the old default, is a flat 100 percent markup, which just means doubling what you paid. Restaurants, jewelry, and luxury goods frequently run 200 percent or more.
Whatever you land on, markup only sets your baseline price. It says nothing about the most a customer will actually pay. Set that markup as your starting point, then hold it up against the market before you commit. A big markup is worthless if the price scares buyers off, and it cuts the other way too. When you are already the cheapest option out there, too small a markup means you are charging less than you easily could.
Frequently asked questions
Does the markup include sales tax or card fees?
No. The tool works from your cost and your pre-tax selling price. Sales tax is added on top of the price at checkout and passes straight through to the government, so it is not part of your markup or margin. Card processing fees behave differently, because they come out of what you keep, so the cleaner move is to build an estimate of those fees into your cost per unit before you set the markup, and the profit per unit lands closer to what actually reaches your account.
How is this different from a profit margin calculator?
Both cover the markup and margin relationship, they just start from opposite ends. This tool is built around markup. You drive it with a markup percent, or solve for the markup from a price or a target margin. A profit margin calculator usually starts from cost and price and centers on the margin figure. If the number already in your head is a markup, start here. If you think in margin first, the margin tool fits better. The math agrees either way.
What is a good gross margin to aim for?
It depends on your costs and how much overhead sits behind each sale, so there is no universal number. As a rough feel, plenty of physical product businesses want gross margins around 40 to 60 percent so there is enough left to cover rent, wages, and marketing and still clear a profit. Services and software often run much higher because their per unit cost is tiny, and fast moving retail can live on far less. Check what your category typically does, then try to beat it by a bit.
Can I use this for services or freelance work, not just products?
Yes. Treat your cost per unit as what one job costs you to deliver, your own hours at a fair rate plus any materials or subcontractor spend. The markup is what you add for profit and overhead, and the margin tells you how much of the invoice is really yours to keep. It runs the same for a plumber quoting a repair as for a shop pricing a coffee mug.
Why can't the margin go to 100 percent?
Because margin measures profit against the selling price, so a 100 percent margin would mean the whole price is profit and the item had cost you nothing. As a target margin climbs toward 100, the price required climbs toward infinity, which is why the tool caps that input below 100 and warns you instead of returning a nonsense number. There is no equivalent ceiling on markup. You can mark an item up 300 or 500 percent and the math still holds together fine.
Does it round the numbers?
The percentages are rounded to two decimals for readability, so a repeating figure like 28.571 shows as 28.57, and dollar amounts display normal cents, which is harmless for everyday pricing. If you are reconciling to the exact penny across many thousands of units, run the raw formula (price equals cost times one plus markup divided by one hundred) and keep the full decimals in your own math.
Are my numbers saved or sent anywhere?
No. Every calculation happens in your browser, and nothing you enter is uploaded or stored on our end. There is no sign-up and no usage cap. The only time your figures travel is when you press Share, which packs them into a link you choose to send, or Embed, which places the live tool on a page you control. Close the tab and the numbers are gone for good.