Business & Seller

Break-Even Calculator

Break-even is the point where the money each sale contributes finally covers what the business costs to keep open.

Last updated July 31, 2026Free, no sign-upHow it works

Monthly revenue needed to break even

high confidence

$738.7713 units a month at $60.00

Exact figure. This calculator has no modeled range — the number follows directly from your inputs.

What it is worked out from

Other fixed costs$250
Software and subscriptions$120

Same in every state
Assumptions 2026.07.1

Why high: this is exact arithmetic on your inputs and the published figures used, so there is no modeled range.

Key figures

Units per month to break even: 13 units
Contribution per unit: $30.05
Contribution margin: 5,008.3%
Units per day: 0.4 units
Fixed costs per month: $370
Variable cost per unit: $29.95Product cost plus every fee charged on the sale.
Extra units to repay start-up cost: 0 unitsOn top of monthly break-even. Zero if no start-up cost was entered.

Cost breakdown

Estimated cost of each component, with low, typical, and high values.
Component	Low	Typical	High
Software and subscriptionsOther	$120	$120	$120
Other fixed costsOther	$250	$250	$250
Monthly revenue needed to break even	$738.77	$738.77	$738.77

The rows above are the figures the monthly revenue needed to break even is worked out from, not parts that add up to it.

What moved your estimate

Each sale contributes $30.05
That is 50.1% of the price left after variable costs, and it is what pays the fixed costs. It takes 13 sales a month to cover $370 of fixed costs — everything after that is profit.
Fees raise the break-even point — increases the estimate
Platform and payment fees take 9.9% of each sale. Without them you would break even at 11 units rather than 13 — 3 of your monthly sales exist purely to pay them.

How this number was produced

Variable cost per unit$24.00 product + $3.90 platform + $2.05 payment$29.95
Contribution$60.00 − $29.95$30.05
Break-even units$370 fixed ÷ $30.0513 units
Break-even revenue13 × $60.00$739

Adjustments applied

Contribution ratio×0.50
50.1 cents of every dollar of revenue goes toward fixed costs and profit.
Fee load×0.10
$5.95 of each $60.00 sale goes to the platform and the processor.

Notes and sources4 notes, 1 source

Worth knowing

Break-even rests on the distinction between fixed and variable costs. Fixed costs are paid whether or not you sell anything — rent, software, salaries. Variable costs arrive with each sale — product, platform fee, processing, shipping. Misclassifying one for the other is what makes most break-even calculations wrong.
A cost that looks fixed often is not. Warehouse space is fixed until you need a second unit; a subscription is fixed until you cross a usage tier. Break-even is a straight line and reality is a staircase, so treat the figure as valid within your current scale rather than at any volume.
Your own time is a real cost. If you are not paying yourself a salary, the fixed costs above understate what the business needs to earn — and a business that breaks even only because its owner works unpaid has not broken even.
This works in units of one product at one price. A business with a range of products should run it on a weighted average contribution, or on the product mix it actually sells, since a single average can hide one product carrying the rest.

Sources

Published seller fee schedules from each platform: Etsy Fees & Payments Policy and Help Center, eBay Selling Fees help pages, Amazon Selling on Amazon fee schedule, Shopify pricing page, TikTok Shop US Seller UniversitysecondaryJuly 2026retrieved 2026-07-31

The arithmetic is simple; getting it right depends entirely on classifying costs correctly and on remembering that platform and processing fees come out of every single sale.

Methodology

How this calculator works

Contribution, not profit

Each sale leaves behind the price less everything that sale itself cost: product, shipping, platform fee, payment processing. That remainder is the contribution, and it is what pays for rent, software, and salaries.

Break-even is fixed costs divided by contribution. It is not fixed costs divided by price, and it is not fixed costs divided by gross profit, because fees come out of every sale and belong in the variable side.

Once the fixed costs are covered, every further sale adds its whole contribution to profit. This is why the units immediately after break-even are worth so much more than the ones before it.

Where break-even calculations go wrong

Misclassification is the usual culprit. Platform fees look like a business expense and belong in variable costs; a delivery van looks variable and is fixed until it is full.

The second is treating the line as valid at any scale. Fixed costs move in steps: another warehouse unit, another employee, the next pricing tier of your software. The figure is reliable near your current volume and progressively less so far from it.

The third is leaving the owner unpaid. It is the easiest way to make a business look viable when it is not, and the calculator asks for a salary line precisely to make it visible.

Location and data

Where the numbers come from

This calculator does not ask where you live, because the answer is the same in every state: it is arithmetic on the figures you enter and the published figures listed below. That is also why the result reports high confidence — there is no regional estimate in it to be uncertain about.

Nothing you enter is transmitted or stored. The calculation runs entirely in your browser, and the only place your inputs appear is in the page URL, so you can bookmark or share a result if you choose to.

secondaryJuly 2026v2026.07.1
Published seller fee schedules from each platform: Etsy Fees & Payments Policy and Help Center, eBay Selling Fees help pages, Amazon Selling on Amazon fee schedule, Shopify pricing page, TikTok Shop US Seller University
Every platform's fee model is versioned separately and carries its own last-verified date and source link, because they change independently and often. Marketplace fees are the most volatile data on this site — a rate can change with a month's notice — so any result built on them is an estimate of what a payout would be under the rates recorded here, never a guarantee of what a platform will actually pay. Each rate is editable in the calculator. Where a figure could not be confirmed by directly retrieving the platform's page, that is recorded on the platform entry rather than glossed over.

Full detail on every dataset is on the data sources page. Spotted something wrong? Report incorrect data.

Calibration

The judgements behind this estimate

These are the figures we chose rather than measured. For each one we record the range of values found across references, what we selected, and why — because an estimate you cannot interrogate is not much better than a guess. The 1 marked high risk are the ones most likely to be wrong and most consequential when they are.

Published marketplace seller fee rateshigh riskmedium confidence
Observed range
0.06 — 0.45 (typical 0.115)percent of sale and flat fees, varying by platform
Why this value
Each platform's rates are taken from its own published seller fee schedule and stored as a separately versioned model with its own last-verified date and source link. The typical value here is roughly the all-in load on a mid-priced item across the marketplaces; the range spans TikTok's 6% referral fee at one end and Amazon's 45% device-accessory category at the other.
Applies to
US schedules only. Every platform charges differently in other markets.
Known limits
This is the most volatile data on the site and the highest-risk entry in this registry. Rates change with little notice, and category, seller tier, store subscription, promotional period, and region all alter what a seller is actually charged. Every rate is editable in the calculator, every result is labelled an estimate rather than a guaranteed payout, and no platform has verified or endorsed these figures. Quarterly review is the shortest cycle used anywhere on this site and is still not frequent enough to guarantee currency.
Sources
Etsy Fees & Payments Policy and Help Center — confirmed directly; Amazon Selling on Amazon fee schedule — confirmed directly; eBay Selling Fees help pages — page blocks automated retrieval; figures from eBay's own published help content; Shopify pricing page — plan costs confirmed; Shopify Payments card rates were not on the page retrieved; TikTok Shop US Seller University — 6% referral rate, set 1 April 2024
Last verified
2026-07-31 · reviewed quarterly
Online card processing ratemedium confidence
Observed range
0.022 — 0.036 (typical 0.029)percent of transaction plus a flat fee
Why this value
2.9% plus 30 cents is the widely published online rate for small merchants across major processors. Used as the default wherever a platform's own processing rate is not published, notably for Shopify Payments and for selling direct.
Applies to
US card-present and card-not-present rates differ, as do rates for international cards. Only the domestic online rate is modeled.
Known limits
Negotiated rates, interchange-plus pricing, and volume tiers all beat this for larger merchants. The flat component matters far more than the percentage on low-value items, which is why it is exposed as its own field.
Sources
Commonly published small-merchant online rates across major processors; Not taken from any single provider's schedule, and explicitly presented in the calculator as a figure to replace with your own
Last verified
2026-07-31 · reviewed annual

Cost factors

What changes the price most

Contribution per unit: Halve it and the break-even volume doubles. The most powerful lever on the whole calculation.
Fixed costs: Directly proportional. Cutting a subscription is usually faster than finding the sales to cover it.
Platform and payment fees: Variable, so they raise break-even volume for every unit sold — often by a surprising number of units.
Price: Raises contribution more than proportionally, because most variable costs do not rise with it. A 10% price rise often cuts break-even volume by more than 20%.
Paying yourself: Adds to fixed costs and is the honest way to test whether the business works.
Product mix: Not modeled. One average contribution can conceal a product that loses money on every sale.

Questions

Frequently asked

How do I calculate the break-even point?

Divide your monthly fixed costs by the contribution each sale makes — the price less product cost, shipping, platform fee, and payment processing. That gives the units you need. Multiply by price for the revenue figure.

What is contribution margin?

What each sale leaves after its own variable costs, available to cover fixed costs. A $60 product with $24 of cost and $6.15 of fees contributes $29.85, or about 50% of the price. It is the number break-even actually depends on.

Are platform fees fixed or variable costs?

Variable — they are charged on each sale and vanish if you sell nothing. Putting them in fixed costs understates the break-even volume, sometimes badly, because it hides the fact that a slice of every sale is spoken for.

Should I include my own salary in break-even?

Yes, if you want the answer to mean anything. A business that breaks even only because the owner works for free is running at a loss that happens to be paid in unpaid labour rather than cash. Including a wage shows what the business genuinely needs to earn.

What if I sell several different products?

Use a weighted average contribution across your actual sales mix, or run each product separately. A single blended figure can hide one product that loses money on every unit while the others carry it.