Markup & Margin Calculator

Work out profit, markup, and margin from a cost and selling price — or start from a target markup/margin percentage to find the price to charge. Updates instantly as you type.

Enter a cost and selling price above to calculate profit, markup, and margin.

Markup vs. margin quick reference

The same profit gives a bigger markup % than margin %, because markup divides by cost while margin divides by the (larger) selling price.

Markup %Equivalent margin %
10%9.09%
15%13.04%
20%16.67%
25%20%
30%23.08%
40%28.57%
50%33.33%
75%42.86%
100%50%
150%60%
200%66.67%

How are markup and margin calculated?

Both start from the same profit — selling price minus cost — but divide it by a different number. Markup divides by cost; margin divides by selling price:

markup %=selling price − costcost×100
margin %=selling price − costselling price×100

Example: $60 cost, $100 selling price

Profit is $100 − $60 = $40.00. That's a markup of 40 ÷ 60 = 66.67% (over cost), but a margin of 40 ÷ 100 = 40% (over selling price) — the same $40 profit, two different percentages.

Example: pricing a $50 cost item for a 25% margin

Solving for selling price when margin is the target rearranges to selling price = cost ÷ (1 − margin/100): 50 ÷ (1 − 0.25) = 50 ÷ 0.75 = $66.67. Charging that price yields a 33.33% markup for the targeted 25.00% margin.

Frequently asked questions

What's the difference between markup and margin?
Markup is profit as a percentage of cost; margin is profit as a percentage of selling price. Because selling price is always larger than cost (when there's a profit), margin is always a smaller number than markup for the same sale — a 100% markup is only a 50% margin.
How do I convert a markup percentage to a margin percentage?
margin = markup ÷ (100 + markup) × 100. For example, a 50% markup converts to 50 ÷ 150 × 100 ≈ 33.33% margin. To go the other way, markup = margin ÷ (100 − margin) × 100.
Should I price using markup or margin?
Margin is generally more useful for pricing decisions because it tells you directly what share of the selling price is profit, which is what most profitability targets (and accounting statements) are based on. Markup is more common in retail and trade pricing, where prices are often set as a percentage on top of wholesale cost.
Can margin ever be 100% or more?
No — margin approaches but never reaches 100%, since it would require an infinite selling price for a fixed nonzero cost. Markup, on the other hand, has no upper limit: pricing at 10x cost is a 900% markup but only a 90% margin.