Amazon Break-Even Calculator
Three numbers decide whether advertising a product makes money: the ACoS you can afford, the most you can pay per click, and the lowest price you can drop to. This works out all three, with your Amazon fees calculated rather than guessed.
Your product
What the buyer pays, including any shipping you charge.
Everything it costs to get one unit into an Amazon warehouse: manufacturing, freight, duty and prep. Leaving out freight is the most common reason a break-even figure comes out too optimistic.
Optional. Storage, returns provision, or anything else you want charged against the unit before ads.
Sets the referral rate. Power tools (drills, saws) bill at 12% - pick "Base Equipment Power Tools", not Tools & Home Improvement (15%).
Longest side first, as packed for shipping. Dimensions decide the size tier, and the size tier usually matters more than weight.
Referral, fulfilment and any closing fee, combined.
Your advertising
Ad orders divided by ad clicks. Find it in the Advertising console under campaign performance. This is the shakiest number on the page - if you are unsure, try a range rather than trusting one figure.
What you would like to spend, as a share of ad revenue. Leave it at break-even to see the ceiling itself.
Optional. If organic sales carry part of the load, you can afford a higher ACoS on the advertised ones. Enter a share to see your blended ceiling.
Your ceilings
The highest cost per click you can pay before the product stops making money. Rounded down to the cent, because rounding a ceiling up gives you a bid that loses on every click.
Per unit sold
Per click
Your break-even ACoS is the same number as your profit margin before advertising. That is not a coincidence - both are profit divided by price. It also means the margin you keep is simply break-even ACoS minus the ACoS you actually run at.
Enter a price and unit cost to see your ceilings.
US Amazon fees as of . Amazon revises these periodically - confirm current rates in Seller Central.
What each bid actually costs you
The same product at different bids. Anything at or past break-even is shown for contrast, not as a suggestion.
| Scenario | Bid | ACoS | Profit per unit | Margin |
|---|
How to read this
Break-even ACoS is the share of revenue you can hand to advertising before profit reaches zero. Spend less and you keep the difference; spend more and each advertised sale costs you money.
Maximum safe bid is derived from it: you buy one click at a time but only convert some of them, so the bid you can afford is your per-unit profit multiplied by your conversion rate.
Amazon runs a second-price auction, so what you actually pay is usually below your maximum bid. That makes the ceiling a limit worth setting, not a price you are committing to pay.
Break-even price is the lowest you can sell at and still cover cost and fees. It is not simply cost plus fees, because the referral fee is a percentage of the price you are solving for, and fulfilment fees step at the $10 and $50 price bands. The calculator solves for it properly rather than approximating.
Every figure here is per unit and before tax. Advertising also drives organic rank, which this does not attempt to value.
Related
Estimates only, based on the figures you enter. Amazon fees are calculated from published US (amazon.com) rates and Amazon revises them periodically - always confirm in Seller Central. Conversion rate and ACoS are your inputs, not measurements, so the ceilings are only as good as those estimates. Peak-season storage, long-term storage and inbound placement fees are not included. Nothing you type is sent anywhere; the calculation runs entirely in your browser.
Knowing the ceiling is one thing. Knowing where you actually are is another.
This works out one product at one set of assumptions. SellerLegend tracks the real numbers across your whole catalogue - actual fees charged, actual ad spend, actual returns - so you can see which products are already past their break-even ACoS.
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