Business and Work Calculators
Quick tools for pricing and trading decisions: profit margin, markup and the everyday maths behind running a small business. Fast, free and no sign-up.
Profit Margin Calculator
Turn cost and sale price into profit, profit margin percent and markup percent.
Open calculator Plot No. 69 · Business & WorkMarkup Calculator
Set a sale price from a cost and markup percent, with profit and resulting margin.
Open calculator Plot No. 76 · Business & WorkFreelance Day Rate Calculator
Turn a target income into the day rate and hourly rate to charge, accounting for overheads and non-billable time.
Open calculator Plot No. 77 · Business & WorkSales Commission Calculator
Work out commission earned and total pay from base salary, sales, commission rate and quota.
Open calculatorWhich business calculator do you need?
Set a price, then check what it leaves you.
| What you want to do | Calculator | What it gives you |
|---|---|---|
| See what margin a price leaves | Profit Margin Calculator | Gross margin percentage and profit from cost and sale price |
| Set a price by adding a markup to cost | Markup Calculator | Sale price, profit and the margin that markup actually produces |
| Work out what to charge per day as a freelancer | Freelance Day Rate Calculator | A day rate from target income, billable days and overheads |
| Check a commission payout | Sales Commission Calculator | Commission on sales above quota, the effective rate and total earnings including base salary |
| Find the volume that covers your fixed costs | Break-Even Calculator | Break-even units and revenue from fixed costs and unit contribution |
What the business and work calculators do
This is the pricing plot. Profit margin and markup are the two ways of expressing the same gap between what something costs you and what you sell it for, and confusing them is the most expensive arithmetic mistake a small business makes. The freelance day rate calculator works backwards from a target income, billable days and overheads to the rate you would have to charge. The sales commission calculator applies a rate to the sales above a quota and adds a base salary, so a payout can be checked rather than trusted.
Margin and markup deserve the extra care because they move in different directions. Markup is profit measured against your cost, so it can exceed 100 percent. Margin is profit measured against the sale price, so it never can. A 50 percent markup sounds like a 50 percent margin and is actually 33.3 percent, and a business that prices as though those were the same is roughly a third short on every sale.
Two related tools live in the finance plot rather than here. The break-even calculator turns fixed costs and unit contribution into the volume that covers them, which is the natural next question once a price is set. The ROI calculator prices a one-off investment rather than a repeat sale. Both are linked from the relevant pages here.
Markup against the margin it really produces
Both columns describe the same sale. Markup is profit as a share of cost; margin is profit as a share of the sale price. The right-hand column uses a 40 cost, the figure the markup calculator starts from, so you can follow one row straight through.
| Markup on cost | Resulting margin | Sale price on a cost of 40 |
|---|---|---|
| 10% | 9.1% | 44.00 |
| 20% | 16.7% | 48.00 |
| 25% | 20.0% | 50.00 |
| 50% | 33.3% | 60.00 |
| 100% | 50.0% | 80.00 |
| 150% | 60.0% | 100.00 |
| 200% | 66.7% | 120.00 |
The conversion is margin equals markup divided by one plus markup. Read it the other way when you have a margin target: to hit a 50 percent margin you need a 100 percent markup, and to hit 60 percent you need 150 percent. Margin cannot reach 100 percent no matter how high the markup goes, because the profit is always a slice of a sale price that includes the cost.
Business & Work guides
Free Shopify profit margin calculator alternative
How Calc Garden's free, no-signup profit margin calculator compares to the Shopify profit margin calculator, with an honest feature table and where each one wins.
Margin vs Markup: The Difference (With Examples)
Markup is profit over cost; margin is profit over price. See the conversion table, worked GBP examples, and how to price from a target margin.
Browse every Calc Garden guide.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between margin and markup?
They share a numerator and differ in the denominator. Markup divides profit by cost, margin divides the same profit by the sale price. Sell an item costing 40 for 60 and the profit is 20, which is a 50 percent markup on cost and a 33.3 percent margin on the sale. Quoting one when you mean the other is why a business can hit its stated percentage and still miss its cash target.
What should I charge as a freelance day rate?
Start from the income you need, not from what competitors advertise. Take your target annual income, add overheads, tax and pension, then divide by the days you can realistically bill, which after admin, sales, holiday and illness is usually far fewer than the working year contains. The freelance day rate calculator lays that out step by step.
Is gross margin the same as profit?
No. Gross margin only accounts for the direct cost of what you sold. Rent, software, salaries, marketing and tax all come out afterwards, so a healthy gross margin can still leave nothing at the bottom. Use break-even to work out what volume covers those fixed costs at the margin you have set.