Find out exactly how many units you need to sell before you start making profit.
Enter your fixed costs and per-unit numbers
Your break-even point is the number of units you need to sell so that total revenue exactly equals total costs — no profit, no loss. Every unit you sell beyond that point contributes directly to profit. It's one of the quickest ways to test whether a product idea, a price, or a new monthly expense is realistic before you commit money to it.
You can't sell part of a unit, so the calculator rounds up to the next whole unit.
Fixed costs stay the same no matter how much you sell during the period: rent, software subscriptions, website hosting, insurance, salaries, and equipment payments. Variable costs rise with every unit sold: the product itself, packaging, shipping you pay, and — for online sellers — marketplace and payment processing fees. Because fees are charged per sale, they belong in variable cost. Use our PayPal, Stripe, or Etsy calculators to find the per-sale fee, then add it to your product cost.
You pay $2,000 a month in fixed costs, sell each unit for $25, and each unit costs you $10 in product, packaging, and fees.
Break-even tells you when you stop losing money, but most businesses need a profit. Add the profit you want to your fixed costs: Units = (Fixed Costs + Target Profit) ÷ Contribution Margin. To earn $1,000 a month in the example above, you need ($2,000 + $1,000) ÷ $15 = 200 units.
Small price changes have a large effect because they change the contribution margin on every unit. Using the same $2,000 fixed costs and $10 variable cost:
| Price per unit | Contribution margin | Break-even units | Break-even revenue |
|---|---|---|---|
| $20 | $10 | 200 | $4,000 |
| $25 | $15 | 134 | $3,350 |
| $30 | $20 | 100 | $3,000 |
| $40 | $30 | 67 | $2,680 |
Raising the price from $20 to $30 halves the number of sales you need. Whether that's a good trade depends on how many buyers the higher price loses.
Once you know your break-even point, compare it with the sales you realistically expect. Margin of safety = (Expected Sales − Break-Even Sales) ÷ Expected Sales. If you expect 180 sales and break even at 134, your margin of safety is about 26% — sales could fall by a quarter before you start losing money. A thin margin of safety is a signal to cut fixed costs or raise prices before scaling.
Break-even analysis assumes a single price, a constant variable cost per unit, and fixed costs that don't change within the period. Real businesses offer discounts, get volume pricing from suppliers, and sell several products at once. Treat the result as a planning estimate, and recalculate whenever your prices, fees, or overhead change. For multiple products, a common approach is to use a weighted-average contribution margin based on your expected sales mix.