Calculate markup percentages, selling prices, and profit margins easily for your US business. Determine exact product pricing with our precise tool.
Last updated: 18 October 2026
A markup percentage calculator for United States sellers. Enter cost and markup to get selling price and profit, or enter cost and price to read markup and margin side by side.
All fields run in your browser. Nothing is stored or sent to a server. Currency is USD.
This tool does not add sales tax, shipping, platform fees, or volume discounts. Add those to cost yourself if you want them covered by the markup. No accuracy guarantee is claimed; formulas follow standard managerial-accounting definitions.
Reference starting points to re-check yourself: IRS Publication 334 for cost terminology, SBA.gov for pricing guidance, and OpenStax Principles of Accounting For textbook markup and margin definitions.
Pick a mode, enter the values you already know, and read the results. Use Cost + markup → price when you know your cost and want a target markup price. Use Cost + price when the price is already set and you need to know the true markup and margin. Use Markup ↔ margin to convert one rate into the other. Use Price + markup → cost when you know the shelf price and the markup you used and need to recover the original cost.
Quantity multiplies profit and revenue totals; per-item results stay the same. Prices display in US dollars, rounded half up to the cent. Percentages show to two decimal places.
Markup is always measured against cost. Margin (gross margin on the sale) is always measured against selling price. Mixing the two is the most common pricing mistake in cost-plus pricing.
Symbols: cost is your full per-unit cost. Price is the pre-tax selling price. Markup is the percentage added to cost. Margin More information required. Margin of 100% or more cannot convert to a finite markup.
All examples below use clearly labeled hypothetical numbers so you can follow the arithmetic. Re-run them in the calculator to reproduce every figure.
Hypothetical retail markup case: cost $50.00, selling price $75.00.
A 50% markup is only a 33.33% margin. That gap is why markup vs margin confusion under-prices goods.
Hypothetical: cost $80.00, markup 25%.
Hypothetical conversions using the identities:
Hypothetical: cost $19.99, markup 35%.
When the effective markup differs from your input by more than 0.01 point, the result panel shows the effective rate next to the input markup.
Hypothetical: cost $100.00, selling price $80.00.
Negative rates are shown as a loss, not blocked.
Same profit, two measuring sticks. The table caption names the comparison you need when checking a price sheet.
| Measure | What it is measured against | Formula | Value on $50 cost / $75 price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Markup | Cost | (price − cost) ÷ cost × 100 | 50.00% |
| Margin | Selling price | (price − cost) ÷ price × 100 | 33.33% |
| Profit per item | Dollar amount | price − cost | $25.00 |
Read margin when you care about how much of each dollar of sales is profit. Read markup when you build prices from cost. Sellers who treat “50% margin” as “50% markup” leave money on the table or lose deals.
This markup to margin conversion table is generated from the identities above. Use it as a quick lookup when a supplier quotes a markup and you need the matching margin.
| Markup on cost | Margin on price | Plain reading |
|---|---|---|
| 10% | 9.09% | $1.10 price for every $1.00 cost |
| 20% | 16.67% | $1.20 price for every $1.00 cost |
| 25% | 20.00% | $1.25 price for every $1.00 cost |
| 33.33% | 25.00% | $1.3333 price for every $1.00 cost |
| 50% | 33.33% | $1.50 price for every $1.00 cost |
| 66.67% | 40.00% | $1.6667 price for every $1.00 cost |
| 100% | 50.00% | Price doubles cost; half of the price is profit |
| 200% | 66.67% | Price is three times cost |
Markup is the percentage added to cost to set a selling price. If an item costs $50 and you sell it for $75, the markup is 50% because the $25 profit equals half of the $50 cost. In US retail and cost-plus pricing, markup is always stated as a percentage of cost, not of price.
There is no single good markup for every business. A workable markup depends on your industry costs, fees, shipping, and competition. This tool does not publish industry averages because no verified industry figures were available. Use the calculator to test a target price against your real cost, then decide what profit you need after platform fees and overhead. SBA.gov pricing guidance and your own margin targets are better starting points than an unsourced “typical” rate.
Markup measures profit against cost. Margin measures profit against selling price. A 50% markup equals about a 33.33% margin. Convert with markup = margin ÷ (1 − margin) and margin = markup ÷ (1 + markup), using decimal form (40% margin → 0.40 ÷ 0.60 → 66.67% markup). Textbook treatments of these definitions appear in managerial accounting sources such as OpenStax Principles of Accounting; cost terminology for small business is also discussed in IRS Publication 334.
Selling price = cost × (1 + markup ÷ 100). For a cost of $80 and a 25% markup, the selling price is $80 × 1.25 = $100. That is the selling price formula this calculator uses in the first mode.
Markup % = (selling price − cost) ÷ cost × 100. On a $50 cost and $75 price, that is $25 ÷ $50 × 100 = 50% markup. Margin on the same pair is 33.33%.
No. This markup calculator uses pre-tax price only. Sales tax depends on state and local rules across the United States and is outside this tool’s scope. Do not treat the output as a tax-inclusive retail price unless you have already built tax into cost or price yourself.
Yes, and the calculator will show a negative markup and negative margin (a loss). For example, cost $100 and price $80 gives profit −$20, markup −20%, and margin −25%.
When your question is about take-home pay, loan payments, or housing costs rather than product pricing, use these Varnda tools:
By default nothing is saved. You can store only non-sensitive numbers (cost, markup, quantity) in this browser’s local storage. Clear them any time with the button below.
This markup calculator answers one pricing question quickly: what price do I charge for a given cost and markup, and what margin does that really give me? Enter cost and markup for a selling price, or cost and price for markup and margin. Convert between the two rates when a partner or platform quotes the other measure. Keep fees and shipping inside cost, recheck sales tax separately, and treat every result as arithmetic within the stated scope—not a guarantee, not tax advice, and not an official determination.
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