Markup Calculator
Calculate markup — how much you add on top of cost to set a price — and see it side by side with margin. Markup is the pricing-decision number (start from a known cost, build a price); margin is the profitability number (start from a price, check what you actually keep).
Fees last verified: 2026-08-02
Your numbers
Results update instantly as you type.
The price you charge the customer.
What it costs you to produce or acquire the item.
Markup
53.8%
Profit as a share of cost.
Margin (for comparison)
35.0%
Profit as a share of selling price.
Profit
$35.00
Breakdown
- Cost$65.00
- Profit$35.00
How the Markup Calculator works
Enter your cost and selling price. The calculator shows markup (profit ÷ cost) and margin (profit ÷ selling price) side by side, so you can see how the same profit dollar amount produces two different percentages depending on which base you use. Three mistakes are common here: applying one flat markup percentage across products with very different costs without checking what margin or dollar profit that actually produces on each; forgetting to fold every real landed cost — shipping, packaging, payment fees — into 'cost' before applying markup, which understates true cost and overstates the resulting price's real profitability; and assuming a round-number markup like '2x' or '100%' is inherently good pricing rather than a starting point that still needs checking against the margin and dollar profit it actually produces.
Who this is for
For product sellers and resellers who start from a unit cost and need to build a price on top of it, rather than starting from a price and analyzing it afterward. Freelancers building a pricing formula from their own cost base use it the same way. Retailers and wholesalers applying a standard markup multiplier across a catalog use it to sanity-check what that multiplier actually implies in real dollar profit and in margin, before assuming a round number like '2x' is automatically the right call everywhere.
Worked example
You buy an item for $65 and sell it for $100. Profit is $100 − $65 = $35. Markup is $35 / $65 × 100 = 53.8%. Margin is $35 / $100 × 100 = 35% — see our Margin Calculator for that side of the math in full detail. Markup is always the larger number whenever there's a profit, which is exactly why confusing the two leads to underpricing if someone aims for '50% profit' using the wrong formula. The same 53.8% markup means something different depending on the item. Applied to a $10 cost, it produces $5.38 of profit on a $15.38 price; applied to a $650 cost, it produces $349.70 of profit on a $999.70 price. Same percentage, very different dollar stakes and very different tolerance for a pricing mistake — which is exactly why a single markup rule applied uniformly across a catalog deserves a second look at each product's actual numbers, not just its category's standard multiplier.
Markup as a pricing tool — and what it doesn't tell you
Markup's real job is building a price from a known cost, which is why it's the standard approach in retail and wholesale: pick a multiplier for your category, multiply cost by it, and the price falls out directly with no division. Keystone pricing — a 100% markup, doubling cost — is the best-known version of this shorthand, common enough in general retail to be a named convention, though it's a starting point for a category, not a rule that fits every product a business sells. The number that keystone pricing (or any standard markup) implies varies with the resulting margin: a 100% markup is always exactly a 50% margin, a 150% markup is a 60% margin, and so on — useful to know before assuming a familiar-sounding markup number is automatically a healthy margin for the business. What markup can't do on its own is tell you whether a price is competitive against the market, or whether the resulting margin is actually enough to cover overhead once every sale is added up — it only describes the relationship between one item's price and its own direct cost. Two pitfalls follow from that narrow scope. A high markup percentage on a low-cost item can still be a small absolute profit — 200% markup on a $2 item is only $4, which may not be worth the transaction and handling cost around it. And markup says nothing about fixed or overhead costs sitting outside any individual item's cost basis — rent, salaries, software, insurance — so a catalog priced entirely on healthy-looking per-item markups can still fail to turn an overall profit if sales volume or per-unit dollar profit isn't enough to clear those fixed costs.
Frequently asked questions
What's the markup formula?
Markup = (Selling price − Cost) ÷ Cost × 100 — profit expressed as a percentage of what the item cost you, not what it sells for. A $35 profit on a $65 cost is a 53.8% markup. Compare that to margin, the same profit divided by the $100 selling price instead (35%) — see our Margin Calculator for that side of the comparison in depth.
What is 'keystone pricing'?
Keystone pricing is a standard retail shorthand for a 100% markup — doubling cost to set price (Price = Cost × 2). It's a common, simple starting point in retail because it's a single multiplication with no percentage math, not a rule that a doubled price is automatically the right price for every product or category.
How do I convert a target margin into the markup I need to apply?
Markup = Target margin ÷ (1 − Target margin), both as decimals. For a 40% target margin: Markup = 0.40 ÷ 0.60 ≈ 66.7%. Applied to a $65 cost, Price = $65 × 1.667 ≈ $108.33 — the same price a direct margin calculation (Cost ÷ (1 − margin)) would produce, just reached by building up from cost instead of dividing down from price.
Why does applying the same markup percentage across very different products cause problems?
Because a uniform markup ignores how differently cost structures behave across a catalog. A flat 50% markup applied to both a $2 low-cost item and a $200 high-cost item produces wildly different absolute profit ($1 versus $100) from the same percentage, and it also ignores that items with different cost compositions — mostly materials versus mostly labor, for example — may need very different markups to actually cover their real, fully-loaded cost. A single blanket markup rule is a starting point, not a substitute for checking each product's real economics.
Can markup be higher than 100%?
Yes — unlike margin, which approaches but never reaches 100%, markup has no ceiling. A $10 cost item sold for $50 has a 400% markup (and an 80% margin), which is ordinary in categories where perceived value sits far above production cost.
Does a high markup always mean good profit?
Not necessarily. A 200% markup on a $2 item is only $4 of profit — a large percentage on a small absolute number. Markup also says nothing about fixed or overhead costs (rent, salaries, software) that sit outside any single item's cost, so a catalog full of high-markup items can still fail to cover the business's real fixed costs if per-unit dollar profit or sales volume is too low.
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