Markup Calculator

What this calculator does

This calculator handles retail and wholesale pricing math in three modes: find the selling price from cost plus markup, find the markup percentage from cost plus selling price, or back-solve cost from selling price minus markup. Every mode also surfaces the profit margin percentage — because markup and margin are the most-confused pair in business pricing, and seeing both numbers side by side prevents the classic mistake of quoting one when you mean the other.

All math is plain arithmetic running locally on your device.

Markup vs margin — pick one and stick to it

This is the single most important concept in pricing, and it produces a shocking amount of cost-of-goods drift in small businesses that get it wrong:

• Markup is the percentage added to cost. Selling price = cost × (1 + markup%). A 50% markup on a $40 cost gives a $60 selling price.
• Margin is the percentage of the selling price that is profit. Margin = (selling − cost) / selling. The same $40 → $60 transaction has a 33.3% margin.

The two numbers converge only at 0% (no profit) and approach 100% margin asymptotically (which corresponds to infinite markup — selling price ≫ cost). For typical retail margins of 30-50%, the markup is 43-100%.

How to use it

1. Find selling price mode: enter cost and markup %. The calculator gives selling price + corresponding margin %.
2. Find markup % mode: enter cost and selling price. The calculator gives both markup and margin percentages.
3. Find cost mode: enter selling price and markup %. The calculator back-solves the cost.

In every mode, you see all four numbers — cost, selling, markup %, margin % — so the markup/margin distinction is visible at a glance.

Industry-typical markup ranges

Markups vary wildly by category. A grocery store running on 10% markup and a jewellery store running on 300% markup are both viable businesses — the difference is turnover. Some rough bands:

• Grocery: 10-30% markup (some loss-leaders below cost)
• Restaurants (food): 200-300% markup on ingredient cost
• Apparel (retail): keystone 100% markup at full price; sales bring this lower
• Electronics — big-ticket: 5-15% markup (razor-thin)
• Electronics — accessories: 100-300% markup (HDMI cables, phone cases, etc.)
• Furniture: 80-200% markup from wholesale
• Jewellery (retail): 250-400% markup
• Software / SaaS: cost of goods is so low (servers + bandwidth) that gross margin is typically 70-90%
• Wholesale / B2B: 15-30% markup
• Used / second-hand resale: highly variable, often 200%+ on items bought cheap

These are starting reference points, not targets. The right markup for your specific business depends on competition, fixed costs, and how fast you turn inventory.

Discounts compress markup proportionally

When you discount the selling price by X%, the markup decreases proportionally. A $60 item with 50% markup, discounted to $48 (20% off selling), now has a 20% markup on the same $40 cost. The dollar profit drops from $20 to $8 — a 60% drop in absolute profit from a 20% sticker discount. Run the Percentage Off Calculator in parallel to this one when modelling promotional pricing.

For tax: sales tax sits on top of selling price and goes to the government. It is neither markup nor margin. If your state has a 9% sales tax on a $60 item, the customer pays $65.40 and you remit $5.40 to the state. Your profit math is unchanged.

Privacy

The calculator runs plain arithmetic in JavaScript on your device. There are no fetch calls, no analytics on the values you enter, no server-side logging.