Break-Even Calculator for E-commerce

Calculating break-even for an ecommerce business requires accounting for costs that traditional brick-and-mortar retailers never face — and ignoring them is why so many online sellers think they are profitable when they are actually losing money on every order. Your break-even point is not simply revenue minus cost of goods sold. Before you reach a single dollar of profit, you must cover: COGS, shipping costs (8–12% of revenue), platform fees (Amazon charges ~15% referral fee; Shopify payments take 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction), return and refund costs (15–30% of orders depending on category, with apparel at the high end), payment processing fees, packaging materials, and customer acquisition costs. A product that costs $10 and sells for $30 looks like a $20 margin — until you subtract $3 in shipping, $4.50 in Amazon referral fees, $3 in return-adjusted losses, $1 in packaging, and $5 in advertising to acquire the customer. Your real margin is $3.50, or 11.7%. This calculator is built for ecommerce sellers who want an honest break-even picture. It is pre-loaded with real benchmarks for platform fees, shipping costs, and return rates so you can plug in your own product costs and pricing and see exactly how many units you must sell each month before you actually make money. Most ecommerce sellers discover their break-even is 40–60% higher than they assumed once all costs are included.