Marketplace Fee & Profit Margin Calculator
Selling on a marketplace almost always costs more than the commission percentage advertised on the homepage. By the time you add payment processing, ad spend to stay visible in search results, the shipping label, and packaging, a product that looked profitable on paper can quietly lose money on every single sale.
This calculator adds up every cost that comes out of your selling price — the marketplace's cut, any fixed per-order fee, payment processing, advertising, shipping you cover, and anything else — and shows the number that actually matters: what you keep after all of it.
The reverse calculator flips the question around. Instead of "how much profit will I make at this price," it answers "what price do I need to charge to hit a specific margin" — useful when you're setting a price from scratch instead of checking one you already picked.
None of this replaces checking the current fee schedule on the platform you actually sell on — marketplaces change their commission structures often, sometimes by category, sometimes mid-year. Treat the numbers you enter here as your own research, not ours.
Frequently Asked Questions
What counts as a "fee" when calculating real profit?
Anything the marketplace or your payment processor takes before the money reaches your bank account: the referral or category commission, any fixed per-order or closing fee, payment processing (often bundled into the commission on marketplaces, but billed separately on platforms like Shopify), and — if you run them — sponsored product ads. Shipping you pay for and packaging are real costs too, even though they're not charged by the platform itself.
What's the difference between margin and markup?
Markup is profit as a percentage of your cost: if a product costs $10 and sells for $15, that's 50% markup. Margin is profit as a percentage of the selling price: the same $5 profit on a $15 sale is a 33.3% margin. They describe the same dollar amount from two different denominators, and mixing them up is one of the most common pricing mistakes — a 50% markup is never a 50% margin.
Why does the calculator say some prices aren't possible?
If your percentage-based costs — commission, payment processing and ad spend combined — add up to 100% or more of the selling price, there is no price high enough to cover them, because raising the price also raises those costs proportionally. In practice this usually means the commission or ad spend assumption is unrealistic, or the product needs a different pricing or sourcing strategy altogether.
Are marketplace commission rates the same for every category?
No — commission percentages are typically set per category (electronics usually sits lower than apparel or media, for example) and are subject to change without much notice. This tool intentionally doesn't hardcode any platform's rates for that reason; always pull the current percentage from your seller dashboard before pricing a new product.