Break-Even Calculator
Calculate break-even units, break-even revenue, contribution margin, and projected ROI %.
Runs in your browser. Nothing you add is uploaded.
What the Break-Even Calculator does
The break-even point is the sales volume at which your income exactly covers your costs: below it every month is a loss, above it every extra sale is profit. This calculator works it out from three numbers you already know — monthly fixed costs, the variable cost of each unit, and your selling price — and shows the break-even quantity, the break-even revenue, the contribution each unit makes, and the profit or loss at the sales volume you expect. It is the quickest way to test whether a price, a new rent or a new hire still leaves the business viable.
How to calculate your break-even point
- Enter your fixed costs for the period: rent, salaries, software, loan repayments — anything you pay whether you sell one unit or a thousand.
- Enter the variable cost per unit: materials, packaging, shipping, payment fees and commission that rise with every sale.
- Enter the selling price per unit, after any discount you normally give.
- Read the break-even units and revenue. If the price is not above the variable cost, no volume can break even and the calculator tells you so.
- Enter the sales volume you expect to see the resulting profit or loss and the return on the costs involved.
The Break-Even Calculator runs entirely in your browser — nothing you enter is uploaded, stored, or logged.
How it works
Break-Even Units Formula
Break-Even Units = Fixed Costs / (Price per Unit - Variable Cost per Unit)Total fixed overhead divided by the profit margin generated per individual unit sold.
Example: 50,000 fixed costs with 80 price and 30 variable cost = 1,000 units to break even.
When to use it
Checking a price before launch
A candle maker with ₹60,000 of monthly fixed costs, ₹180 of materials per candle and a ₹450 price contributes ₹270 per candle, so needs 223 sales a month to break even. If that is more than the market can take, the price, the costs or the plan has to change before launch, not after.
Deciding whether a new cost is affordable
Adding a ₹25,000-a-month employee to the business above raises the break-even point by about 93 candles a month. Seeing the extra volume needed in units makes it easy to judge whether the hire will pay for itself.
Presenting a business plan
Lenders and investors ask how many sales it takes to stop losing money. A break-even figure built from clear fixed and variable costs answers that directly and shows you understand your own unit economics.
Good to know
- The contribution margin (price minus variable cost) is the number to watch. Raising the price or cutting a variable cost increases it and lowers the break-even point immediately.
- Include every per-sale cost in the variable cost: payment gateway fees of 2%, marketplace commission and returns add up and are easy to forget.
- Break-even assumes you can sell the volume at that price. Compare the result with realistic demand, not with the capacity of your workshop.
- Run the numbers for your best and worst months. A seasonal business can break even over the year while losing money for several months in a row.
Frequently asked questions
What does contribution margin mean?
What is the break-even formula?
Why does the calculator say I can never break even?
Should break-even include my own salary?
Related tools
UTM Builder
Build campaign tracking links, or strip tracking from a URL.