Markup Calculator
Find out exactly how much to charge for a product. See your markup, margin, and profit before you set a final price.
Enter your numbers above to see what your margin tells you about this price.
Your next step will appear here once you calculate.
What markup actually means
Markup is the amount you add on top of your cost to set your selling price. It is shown as a percentage of what the product cost you to buy or make.
Think of a shop buying jackets for $40 each. If it sells each jacket for $60, that is a $20 markup. Twenty divided by forty equals fifty percent markup.
A worked example: pricing a cup of coffee
A small coffee shop buys a bag of beans for $10. That bag brews enough coffee to sell for $45 worth of cups.
- Cost: $10
- Revenue from cups sold: $45
- Profit: $35
- Markup: $35 ÷ $10 × 100 = 350%
- Margin: $35 ÷ $45 × 100 ≈ 78%
Notice the markup and margin numbers are very different, even though they describe the exact same sale.
Markup vs. margin: the mix-up that costs people money
Markup and margin often get confused, but they answer different questions. Markup compares your profit to your cost. Margin compares your profit to your selling price.
Pricing a product using a markup percentage when you actually meant margin can quietly shrink your real profit. The table below shows how the two numbers diverge as markup grows.
| Markup % | Margin % | Difference |
|---|---|---|
| 10% | 9.1% | 0.9 pts |
| 25% | 20.0% | 5.0 pts |
| 50% | 33.3% | 16.7 pts |
| 100% | 50.0% | 50.0 pts |
| 200% | 66.7% | 133.3 pts |
Frequently asked questions
Want to see this from the revenue side instead?
Try the Profit Margin Calculator to work backward from your target margin.