Free tool for founders
Last updated: Published by Cydney Mar
This product costing calculator adds up what one finished unit really costs to make and land, then shows the selling price you need to hit your target margin.
Product Costing Desk is a free, practical site published by Cydney Mar for founders preparing a product for manufacturing and retail. Enter materials, labor, packaging, and landed costs, spread one-time tooling across your first order, and see the margin you need for retail, direct-to-consumer, or TV shopping before you commit to a production run.
Add every per-unit cost, spread one-time costs over your order quantity, then divide the total unit cost by one minus your target margin. A product that costs $40 to make at a 60% target margin needs a $100 selling price, the worked example used by Product Marketing Alliance in its pricing guide.
The calculator below does the arithmetic and shows the matching markup, so you can speak the same language as suppliers, who often quote markup, and retail buyers, who usually talk margin.
No sign-up and nothing is saved. Results appear only after every required figure is valid, and they clear when you change an input, so you never read a number left over from earlier entries.
Your estimate will appear here.
Enter your per-unit costs and a target margin, then select Calculate. Numbers like 1,250.50 or $12 are fine.
Assumptions behind this estimate
This is an estimate for planning, not a financial, legal or tax decision.
A product costing calculator is a tool that totals the cost of making and landing one unit of a product and converts it into a selling price at a chosen margin. On Product Costing Desk it covers materials, labor or the factory price, packaging, freight and duties, and one-time costs such as samples and tooling spread over the first order. The output is a planning estimate, not a quote.
To calculate product margin, subtract your total unit cost from the selling price, divide by the selling price, and multiply by 100. A unit that costs $17 and sells for $40 leaves $23, which is a 57.5% margin.
The formula is simple. What usually goes wrong is the cost going into it: a factory quote without freight, duties, labels, or the sample rounds it took to get there. Those gaps make a margin look healthy on paper and thin in the bank account.
No. A 50% markup is a 33.3% margin, because markup divides profit by cost while margin divides it by price. The table converts common markups for a unit that costs $10.
| Markup | Selling price | Gross profit | Gross margin |
|---|---|---|---|
| 25% | $12.50 | $2.50 | 20.0% |
| 30% | $13.00 | $3.00 | 23.1% |
| 50% | $15.00 | $5.00 | 33.3% |
| 100% | $20.00 | $10.00 | 50.0% |
| 150% | $25.00 | $15.00 | 60.0% |
| 200% | $30.00 | $20.00 | 66.7% |
Cydney Mar, who publishes this site, guides founders through a six-stage Concept-to-Reality Pathway. Cost and margins sit fourth: after you know the product, have the right samples, and have supplier quotes, and before you finalize specs for production. Costing earlier gives rough numbers; costing later risks committing to an order that cannot earn a profit.
Published by Cydney Mar
