Calculate your selling price from cost and markup, work out the markup on any sale, and convert between markup and margin — three tools in one.
Want your markup calculated automatically? Stocksmith tracks your material costs and shows real profit per product — no spreadsheets required.
Try free for 14 daysMarkup is the amount added to your cost to arrive at a selling price. The formula is: Selling Price = Cost × (1 + Markup% ÷ 100). To find the markup on a product you already sell: Markup% = ((Selling Price − Cost) ÷ Cost) × 100. Markup and margin are different: a 50% markup gives you a 33% margin, not a 50% margin.
Enter your cost and the markup percentage you want to apply. The calculator will show you the selling price and how much profit you make.
Selling Price
$18.70
per unit
Margin is different from markup — see the Markup vs. Margin section below.
This calculator has three modes. Use whichever fits your situation — they all update live as you type.
Use this when you know what a product costs to make and want to figure out what to charge. Enter your cost and the markup percentage you want to apply. The calculator shows you the resulting selling price, your profit in dollar terms, and what margin that works out to.
If you're not sure what markup to use, the benchmarks section below gives you typical ranges by product category.
Use this to check the markup you're already applying. Enter your cost and your current selling price. The calculator tells you your markup percentage and how much profit you're making per unit. If the number looks lower than you expected, it's usually because labour and overhead weren't fully included in the cost.
This is the one that costs people money. If a wholesale buyer says they need "40% margin", they don't mean 40% markup — they mean 40% of the selling price should be profit. To hit a 40% margin, you need to apply a 66.67% markup. Enter any margin percentage to see the equivalent markup, or any markup to see the equivalent margin.
Tired of manually tracking your costs? Stocksmith calculates your exact cost per unit from your bills of materials and labour automatically. No more guessing what to put in the cost field.
Try free for 14 days →Markup is the amount added to the cost of a product to arrive at its selling price, expressed as a percentage of the cost.
If it costs you $10 to make a unit and you sell it for $20, your markup is 100%. You've added 100% of the cost to get your price. The formula is:
Markup % = ((Selling Price − Cost) ÷ Cost) × 100
Selling Price = Cost × (1 + Markup% ÷ 100)
Markup starts from cost. That's the key thing to remember.
Markup and margin both measure profitability, but they use different bases — and this trips people up more than almost any other pricing concept.
Markup is profit as a percentage of cost. Margin is profit as a percentage of selling price. Same dollar profit, different denominators, different numbers.
| Cost | Selling Price | Profit | Markup % | Margin % |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $10.00 | $12.50 | $2.50 | 25% | 20% |
| $10.00 | $15.00 | $5.00 | 50% | 33.3% |
| $10.00 | $20.00 | $10.00 | 100% | 50% |
| $10.00 | $25.00 | $15.00 | 150% | 60% |
The practical reason this matters: if a retail buyer tells you they need 40% margin, and you think "ok, I'll use 40% markup" — you've undercut yourself. They'll end up with a 40% margin only if you use a 66.67% markup. Use the converter in Mode 3 any time a buyer quotes in margin terms.
For a deeper look at how cost feeds into price, our guide on calculating manufacturing cost per unit walks through the full costing framework.
Here are the four formulas this calculator uses, with worked examples so you can check the math yourself.
A unit costs $4.25 to make and you want a 150% markup:
Selling Price = $4.25 × (1 + 150 ÷ 100) = $4.25 × 2.5 = $10.63
Profit = $10.63 − $4.25 = $6.38
Margin = $6.38 ÷ $10.63 × 100 = 60%
A product costs $6.00 to make and sells for $18.00:
Markup % = (($18.00 − $6.00) ÷ $6.00) × 100 = ($12.00 ÷ $6.00) × 100 = 200%
Margin = $12.00 ÷ $18.00 × 100 = 66.7%
Markup % = Margin % ÷ (100 − Margin %) × 100
Example: 40% margin → Markup = 40 ÷ 60 × 100 = 66.67%
Margin % = Markup % ÷ (100 + Markup %) × 100
Example: 66.67% markup → Margin = 66.67 ÷ 166.67 × 100 = 40%
These are markup ranges commonly seen across small-batch product categories. Use them as a starting point, not a ceiling — your actual markup should come from your real costs, not from copying category averages.
| Product Category | Typical Retail Markup | Equivalent Margin |
|---|---|---|
| Soap & bath products | 100–200% | 50–67% |
| Candles & home fragrance | 150–300% | 60–75% |
| Jewellery & accessories | 200–400% | 67–80% |
| Skincare & cosmetics | 150–300% | 60–75% |
| Packaged food & beverage | 100–150% | 50–60% |
| Supplements & nutraceuticals | 150–300% | 60–75% |
| Wholesale to retailers (all categories) | 50–100% | 33–50% |
Wholesale markup is lower because you're selling in volume to a buyer who will apply their own markup when selling to customers.
These are the ones we see most often.
If you've promised a wholesale buyer a "40% margin" but calculated it as a 40% markup, you've given them a 28.6% margin instead. They'll notice. Use Mode 3 of this calculator before every wholesale quote to make sure you're speaking the same language.
A 200% markup on materials alone is very different from a 200% markup on your full cost (materials + labour + overhead + packaging). Most businesses that feel they're making healthy margins are only marking up their material cost, leaving labour and overhead uncovered.
A labour-intensive product may need a 300% markup to be profitable. A simple, fast-to-produce one might work at 150%. Blanket markups hide underperforming products and leave money on the table on your best ones.
If your cost is $12 and a competitor sells a similar product for $18, pricing at $18 gives you a 50% markup. That might be fine. Or their materials might be sourced differently, their labour might be priced differently, or they might be losing money on every sale. Price from your costs up, then check where the market sits.
This calculator handles the math for a single product. Once you're managing multiple products with different components, labour times, and costs — and those costs are moving as supplier prices change — doing this by hand becomes a real time drain.
That's what Stocksmith is built for. It tracks your material purchases and calculates true cost per unit from your bills of materials. When your coconut oil goes up in price, your finished-product cost updates with it. You can see markup and margin on every product, and know immediately which ones are profitable and which need repricing.
If you sell wholesale, Stocksmith tracks those orders separately so your margins are clear per channel. And because it connects to Shopify, Etsy and other platforms, your COGS is always calculated from real order data.
Try Stocksmith free for 14 days →Anyone who sells a physical product and needs to understand the relationship between cost, selling price, markup, and margin. Specifically, it helps:
Markup is the amount added to the cost of a product to arrive at its selling price, expressed as a percentage of the cost. If a product costs $10 to make and you sell it for $15, your markup is 50% — you added 50% of the cost on top. The formula is: Markup% = ((Selling Price − Cost) ÷ Cost) × 100. Markup tells you how much more than cost you're charging, which is useful for setting prices. It's different from margin, which measures profit as a percentage of revenue instead.
Markup is profit as a percentage of cost. Margin is profit as a percentage of selling price. They use different denominators, so the same dollar profit produces different percentage numbers. A product that costs $10 and sells for $20 has a 100% markup and a 50% margin. This matters most when wholesale buyers quote in margin terms — if a buyer says they need 40% margin, you need to charge a 66.67% markup (not 40%) to deliver that. Always clarify which number a buyer is using before you quote.
There's no universal answer — your markup needs to cover your full cost (materials, labour, overhead, packaging) and leave enough profit to sustain and grow the business. For retail sales, most small-batch product businesses target 100–300% markup depending on the category. Candles and jewellery often carry higher markups than packaged food because they absorb more labour time per unit. For wholesale, you're typically looking at 50–100% markup. The key is to start from your real cost, not from what competitors charge.
To calculate markup percentage: subtract your cost from your selling price to get the profit, then divide that profit by your cost and multiply by 100. The formula is: Markup % = ((Selling Price − Cost) ÷ Cost) × 100. For example, if your cost is $8 and you sell for $20: ($20 − $8) ÷ $8 × 100 = 150% markup. You can use Mode 2 of this calculator to do this instantly — just enter your cost and selling price and it calculates your markup and margin automatically.
No. Markup and profit margin both measure how much money you make relative to cost — but they divide by different numbers. Markup divides profit by cost. Margin divides profit by selling price. Because selling price is always higher than cost, margin is always a lower percentage than markup for the same transaction. A 100% markup gives you a 50% margin. A 50% markup gives you a 33% margin. These are not interchangeable — using the wrong one in a wholesale negotiation can mean significantly undercharging.
To convert margin % to markup %: divide the margin % by (100 minus the margin %) and multiply by 100. The formula is: Markup% = Margin% ÷ (100 − Margin%) × 100. For example, a 40% margin: 40 ÷ (100 − 40) × 100 = 40 ÷ 60 × 100 = 66.67% markup. Going the other way (markup to margin): Margin% = Markup% ÷ (100 + Markup%) × 100. The Mode 3 converter in this calculator does both conversions instantly.