💼 Business & Marketing Calculators

Conversion values, lifetime value, and unit economics: the numbers that decide an ad budget or a price, with every assumption stated and the arithmetic shown.

Marketing & Ads 9

Pricing & Profit 6

Operations 3

More tools 18

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Margin and markup are not the same number

A 50 percent markup is a 33 percent margin. Multiply cost by 1.5 when you meant to hit a 50 percent margin and you have priced 17 points of profit away on every unit you sell. Markup is measured against cost, margin against price, and the gap between them widens the higher you go: a 100 percent markup is a 50 percent margin, and a 300 percent markup is a 75 percent one.

This is why the markup vs margin page shows the trap explicitly rather than just converting between the two. If you take one thing from this category, take this: to hit a target margin you divide by one minus the margin, you do not multiply by one plus it.

A metric without margin is not an answer

ROAS of 3.5x sounds good and can be losing money. At a 25 percent margin, break-even ROAS is 4.0x, because every advertising dollar has to be recovered out of gross profit rather than out of revenue. The same logic governs CPA: the number that matters is not what you paid to acquire a customer, it is what you paid against what that customer is worth. Both of those calculators ask for margin first, and they ask because the answer is meaningless without it.

The other thing worth stating plainly: benchmarks are averages with soft definitions underneath. A published figure like a 70 percent cart abandonment rate or 10 cents of revenue per email is a useful anchor and a poor target. Your business is not the average of everyone else's.

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between margin and markup?

Markup is measured against your cost, margin against your selling price. A 50 percent markup produces a 33 percent margin, and the two diverge further as they rise: a 100 percent markup is a 50 percent margin. To hit a target margin you divide cost by one minus the margin. Multiplying cost by one plus the margin is the common mistake and it silently underprices every unit.

What ROAS do I need to break even?

One divided by your gross margin. At a 25 percent margin you need 4.0x, at 40 percent you need 2.5x, and at 50 percent you need 2.0x. This is why a 3.5x ROAS can be a loss: advertising has to be paid out of gross profit, not out of revenue. Our ROAS calculator asks for margin for exactly this reason.

Should I use revenue or profit as the basis for these numbers?

Profit, wherever you can. Revenue-based figures flatter you and lead to overbidding, because they treat every sales dollar as if it were yours to spend. Where a calculator here can accept either, it tells you which basis it used and what that assumption implies, rather than quietly picking the more optimistic one.

How current are the benchmark figures you quote?

Each page that quotes a benchmark carries a data-reviewed date and names the source, and those figures are on a refresh list rather than left to rot. Treat them as anchors for orientation rather than targets: they are industry averages with loose definitions underneath, and your own numbers are the ones that matter.