Dropshipping and E-Commerce Profit Calculator

A product with a 40 price tag and a 12 supplier cost looks like a 28 profit. Online it is nothing like that. The courier, the box, the payment processor, the marketplace, the ad that brought the customer and the orders that come back all take a share. Sellers who skip this arithmetic often discover that they are working for the platforms. This page lists every cost of one order and shows what is left.

What goes in

Enter the selling price without sales tax, any shipping the customer pays, your cost per item, the shipping you pay per order, packaging, the payment fee as a percentage plus a fixed part, a marketplace or platform fee, advertising per order, the return rate, the cost of return shipping, the share of returned items you cannot resell, your orders per month and fixed monthly costs. Every box has a sensible starting value so the result is never empty.

How returns are treated

A returned order brings no revenue and no marketplace fee, since the sale is cancelled. But you have already paid shipping out, packaging, the payment processor and the ad, and now you pay return shipping too. The share of returned goods you cannot sell again is written off at product cost, and the rest returns to stock. The note under the result states these assumptions so you can adjust them to how your own platform behaves.

A worked example

The default is a 40 product with a cost of 12, shipping out of 5, packaging of 0.80, a 2.9% plus 0.30 payment fee, 8 of advertising and an 8% return rate with 4 return shipping and 20% unsellable. Revenue kept is 36.80 per order. The costs are product 11.23, shipping 5.00, packaging 0.80, payment fees 1.46, return shipping 0.32 and advertising 8.00. Profit per order is 9.99, a margin of 27.14% on revenue kept, and 17.99 before advertising. Break-even ROAS is 2.05: every unit spent on ads must bring back at least 2.05 in revenue. With 500 orders a month and 1,500 of fixed costs, the monthly profit is 3,494, and 151 orders a month cover the fixed costs. The marketplace sample, a 60 product costing 22 with a 12% marketplace fee, 5% returns and 5 of ads, earns 15.00 an order, needs a ROAS of 2.85 and makes 3,600 over 300 orders.

Reading break-even ROAS

The number tells you how much room the advertising has. At a 2.05 break-even, a campaign running at a ROAS of 3 is profitable and one at 1.5 loses money on every sale, whatever the dashboard says about revenue. Use it with the ROAS Calculator, which turns a campaign report into the same measure.

Edge cases

A return rate of 100% leaves no revenue and a loss on every order. A marketplace fee of 0 suits your own store. If profit per order is negative, the page says that no number of orders covers the fixed costs. The price must be above zero, and percentages from 0 to 100. Packaging, return shipping and advertising accept zero.

Limits

The figures are averages per order, so one large order and one small order are treated alike. Taxes, import duty, currency conversion, chargebacks, storage fees and the cost of your own time are not included. Payment fees are assumed to stay with the processor on a refund, which varies by provider. Check the result against a month of real orders, and adjust the return rate to what you see.

Related tools

• ROAS, CPM, CPC and CTR Calculator shows whether an ad campaign beats the break-even ROAS.
• Payment Gateway Fee Calculator explains how the fixed part of a fee hits small orders.
• Profit Margin Calculator gives the margin of a single sale without the platform costs.
• Break-Even Point Calculator turns monthly fixed costs into a sales target.