List price to hit your target margin: $62.25, an exact figure.
List price to hit your target margin
high confidence
$62.2540% margin after fees, returns
Exact figure.This calculator has no modeled range — the number follows directly from your inputs.
What makes up the typical figure
Your profit$25
Your time — 45 minutes$19
Materials$8
Platform fee (6.5%)$4.05
Everything else$6.56
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.
Quick facts
True cost per unit
$31.19Materials, time, packaging, shipping, overhead, and a returns allowance.
Profit per unit
$24.90
Average price actually realised
$62.25After discounting. Equal to the list price if you never discount.
Realised margin
40%
Markup on cost
99.6%
Wholesale price at ÷2
$31.12The conventional wholesale rule. Check it still clears your cost — at high labour content it frequently does not.
What you earn per hour at this price
$58.20Profit plus the labour you costed in, over the time it takes. The real answer to whether making this is worth your while.
Cost breakdown
Estimated cost of each component, with low, typical, and high values.
Component
Low
Typical
High
MaterialsMaterials
$8
$8
$8
Your time — 45 minutesLaborAt $25.00 an hour. If you leave this at zero you are pricing your own work at nothing.
$18.75
$18.75
$18.75
PackagingMaterials
$1.50
$1.50
$1.50
Overhead per unitOther
$2
$2
$2
Returns allowance (3%)OtherReturned units still consumed materials and time, so the cost is carried by the units that sell.
$0.94
$0.94
$0.94
Platform fee (6.5%)Other
$4.05
$4.05
$4.05
Payment processingOther
$2.12
$2.12
$2.12
Your profitOther
$24.90
$24.90
$24.90
List price to hit your target margin
$62.25
$62.25
$62.25
Every figure here is exact arithmetic on your inputs; the rows add up to the total.
What moved your estimate
•
Your time is 62% of the cost
45 minutes at $25.00 an hour is $18.75 per unit. If the price this produces looks too high for the market, the honest options are to make it faster or accept a lower hourly rate — not to pretend the time is free.
↑
A 3% return rate — increases the estimate
Adds $0.94 to the cost of every unit that does sell. Apparel and anything with fit or colour uncertainty runs far higher than most sellers assume.
How this number was produced+
Labour45 min ÷ 60 × $25.00$18.75
Base costmaterials + labour + packaging + shipping + overhead$30.25
A 3% return rate spreads across the units that sell.
Price realisation×1.00
No discounting assumed.
Percentage fees×0.91
9.5% of the realised price goes to the platform and processor.
Notes and sources6 notes, 1 source
Worth knowing
The price is solved rather than marked up. Dividing cost by one minus the target margin gives the wrong answer whenever percentage fees are involved, because raising the price raises the fee charged on it — the calculator accounts for that circularity.
Your own time is a cost whether or not you pay yourself for it. Leaving the labour rate at zero produces a price that looks competitive and a business that earns nothing, which is the single most common failure in handmade and small-batch selling.
Returns are handled by loading the cost of the units that sell, since a returned item has already consumed its materials and your time. The default of 3% is low for anything involving fit or colour — apparel commonly runs several times that.
Discounting is optional and off by default, but if you run sales regularly it belongs in the list price. A business that discounts 30% of its units by 20% realises 94% of list, and pricing as though it realised 100% quietly erases a fifth of the margin.
The wholesale figure applies a conventional divisor and is shown as a check rather than a recommendation. At high labour content, halving a retail price often lands below cost, which is the point at which wholesale stops being viable for that product.
No tax is calculated. Sales tax depends on where you and your buyer are and on whether a platform collects it for you; income tax on the profit depends on your business structure.
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
Add returns and habitual discounting and the simple arithmetic stops working entirely. This calculator solves for the price that survives all of it — and insists you put a value on your own time.
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Methodology
How this calculator works
Why the price has to be solved for
Setting a price to hit a margin looks like dividing cost by one minus the margin. That works only without percentage fees. With them, raising the price raises the fee, which eats into the margin you were trying to protect, which requires a higher price again.
The calculator resolves that in one step by dividing by one minus the margin minus the fee percentages. A $20 cost at a 40% target with 9.5% in fees needs about $39.60, not the $33.33 the simple division gives — a 19% difference that would otherwise show up as a permanently missed target.
Costing your own time
Labour is entered as minutes and an hourly rate, and it belongs in the cost even when nobody invoices you for it. A maker who leaves it out prices as though their time were free, sells steadily, and eventually notices the business generates no money.
The result reports what you actually earn per hour at the price it produces. That is usually the number worth looking at: if a product cannot carry a rate you would accept from an employer, the answer is to make it faster, charge more, or stop making it — not to keep absorbing the difference.
Returns and discounting
A returned unit has already consumed its materials and your time. The cost is therefore carried by the units that do sell, which is why the returns allowance divides the cost rather than adding a percentage to it.
Discounting works the other way, on price. If you sell a third of your units at 20% off, you realise about 93% of list, and a list price set as though you realised 100% quietly misses the margin every time you run a sale. Building it in is the difference between a discount being a promotion and a discount being a loss.
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.
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
Product return rate allowancelow confidence+
Observed range
0 — 0.4 (typical 0.03)share of orders returned
Why this value
A deliberately low default, because return rates vary so enormously by category that any middling figure would be wrong for almost everyone. Returns load the cost of the units that do sell, since a returned item has already consumed its materials and labour.
Applies to
Not regionally variable.
Known limits
Apparel and footwear commonly run many times the default, and the high end of the observed band reflects that. A single default cannot serve both a category with near-zero returns and one where a third of orders come back.
Sources
No public agency publishes return rates by category; Editorial band; the calculator prompts the user to raise it for categories with fit or colour uncertainty
Last verified
2026-07-31 · reviewed annual
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Cost factors
What changes the price most
Your time
Usually the largest cost in anything handmade, and the one most often left out entirely.
Target margin
Sets everything else. A 50% target rather than 40% raises the price by roughly a fifth.
Platform fees
Compound with the price, which is why the calculation is circular rather than a simple division.
Returns
Loads the cost onto units that sell. At a 20% return rate every sold unit carries 25% more cost.
Discounting
Cuts realised price. Habitual sales must be built into the list price or the margin never arrives.
What the market will pay
Not modeled and ultimately decisive. This gives you the price you need, not the price anyone will pay.
Questions
Frequently asked
How do I price a handmade product?
+
Add up materials, your time at a real hourly rate, packaging, shipping, and a share of overhead, then solve for a price that leaves your target margin after platform and payment fees. Costing your own time is the step that decides whether the business earns anything.
How much should I charge for my time?
+
At minimum, what you would accept from an employer for similar work. Many makers use $20 to $35 an hour for skilled craft work. Whatever you choose, put it in the calculation — a price that ignores your labour is not a price, it is a subsidy.
What is a good profit margin for a product?
+
Handmade and small-batch sellers commonly target 40% to 60% to cover the variability of small production runs. Retail resale runs thinner, often 20% to 40%. The right target is one that survives your fees, your return rate, and your discounting — all of which this calculator applies before reporting the margin.
How do I price for wholesale?
+
The convention is half the retail price, on the basis that the retailer doubles it. Check that it still clears your cost — with high labour content it frequently does not, which is the honest signal that the product is not viable at wholesale rather than a reason to accept the loss.
Should I include returns in my pricing?
+
Yes, if you get any. A returned unit consumed materials and time and produced no revenue, so its cost falls on the units that sell. At a 10% return rate every sold unit carries about 11% more cost than it appears to.