Know your lowest safe price before you list it.

The Profit Calculation Tool (profitCALC) answers the question every maker asks too late: what is the least I can charge for this and still get paid? Type in what one item really costs you, pick where you sell, set the margin you want to keep, and it works out the Minimum Viable Price on the spot.

Made for

Makers and crafters selling handmade goods

Etsy, Amazon, Shopify and eBay sellers

Small shops pricing a new product or checking an old one

What it does

Your true unit cost: supplies, your time, postage and boxes, and a slice of rent and running costs.

Marketplace fees ready to go: choose Etsy (6.5%), eBay (13%), Amazon (15%) or Shopify (roughly 3.5%), or enter the rate you actually pay. On top of that it allows 3% for card processing.

Every number that matters: your Minimum Viable Price, what the item costs you in total, the marketplace and card fees in dollars, the profit you keep, your markup on cost and a "2x" retail suggestion.

A money bar that shows how each sale splits between costs, fees and your profit.

Instant updates as you change any number.

Save your work the old-fashioned way: Save to File writes your numbers to a small file you keep, named after your product; Open Saved File loads it again whenever a cost or a fee changes.

Why pricing math should not be rented

Pricing is the one calculation you do again every time a cost or a fee changes. Paying a monthly fee for a pricing service, or sharing your costs and margins with one, makes little sense for a sum that fits on a single page. profitCALC is that page, as a file you keep. It makes no network connection at all and works with the internet switched off.

What is in the download

One HTML file, profitCALC.html, about 49 KB.
Nothing to install: open it in your web browser.
Three ready-made examples (a mug, a T-shirt and a downloadable product) so you can see it work before typing your own figures.

Price your first product

Save the file and double-click it.
Press one of the examples to see how the numbers fit together, then press Reset.
Enter what one item costs you, choose your selling platform (or a custom rate) and your target margin.
Read your Minimum Viable Price. Anything below it loses money once fees are paid.
Keep it: give the product a name and press Save to File. Copy Results and Print / Save PDF give you a text summary or a page for your files.

Good to know

One product per calculation. Nothing is kept by the browser itself: your numbers live in the files you save, wherever you choose to keep them.
Only percentage fees are counted. Flat charges such as a listing fee or a per-sale fee are left out, and marketplaces change their rates, so compare the built-in figures with your own statement and type your real rate when they differ.
The 3% for card processing is always counted, custom rate or not.
If your margin and fees add up to 100% or more, it warns you instead of showing an impossible price.
Amounts are in US dollars.
Tested in Google Chrome on a computer, at desktop and phone widths; not tested on a real phone.

Questions buyers ask

Is margin the same as markup? No. Margin is your profit as a share of the selling price; markup is your profit as a share of your cost. profitCALC shows both, so you can talk to suppliers and customers in either language.

What is the "2x" guide? A common rule of thumb: twice the Minimum Viable Price as a starting retail price. It is a starting point for your own judgement, not a required price.