Markup Calculator

Markup measures profit against what you paid. Buy a product for $50, sell it for $70, and the $20 profit divided by the $50 cost gives a 40% markup. It is the natural language of buying: suppliers, wholesalers, and anyone setting shelf prices from a cost sheet thinks in markup, because the cost is the number they already know.

Markup % = (Price − Cost) ÷ Cost × 100
Price = Cost × (1 + Markup ÷ 100)
Cost = Price ÷ (1 + Markup ÷ 100)
Margin % = Markup ÷ (100 + Markup) × 100

This calculator solves in all three directions. Give it cost and markup and it prices the product. Give it cost and price and it tells you the markup you are already charging. Give it price and markup and it recovers the underlying cost, which is handy when you are reverse-engineering a competitor's pricing or auditing an old price list where the cost data went missing.

The margin equivalent beside every result exists because markup and margin get confused constantly, and the confusion always costs the seller. A 50% markup produces only a 33.3% margin. The gap widens as numbers grow: a 100% markup is a 50% margin, and a 300% restaurant-style markup is a 75% margin. The conversion runs through one identity, margin = markup ÷ (100 + markup). If your accountant asks for margins and your price list is built on markup, the table above translates every common value, and our profit margin calculator works the whole problem from the margin side, including net margin after overhead.

One caution on typical markups: keystone pricing (a 100% markup, doubling your cost) survives in retail because it roughly covers overhead and leaves profit at moderate volumes, but it is a starting point rather than a rule. A markup that looks generous per unit can still lose money once rent and payroll are spread across slow sales. To check whether your markup covers your fixed costs at your actual volume, run your numbers through our break-even point calculator.