Markup Calculator
Turn a cost and a markup percentage into a selling price and the profit you earn.
Price and profit
Enter your cost and the markup, and you get both the selling price and the profit baked into it.
Markup is not margin
Markup is profit over cost; margin is profit over price. The same money gives a smaller margin than markup.
What is markup?
Profit added on top of cost
Markup is the amount you add to the cost of an item to set its selling price, expressed as a percentage of that cost. If something costs you 50 and you apply a 40% markup, you add 40% of 50 — that is 20 — so it sells for 70. Markup is the everyday language of retail and trade pricing because it starts from the figure you already know: what the item cost you.
Enter the cost and the markup percentage to get the selling price and the profit.
Take the markup percentage, turn it into a multiplier, and apply it to the cost.
Selling price = cost × (1 + markup ÷ 100)The profit is simply the part you added on top: cost × markup ÷ 100, which is 20 in the example. The selling price is the cost plus that profit. Because both figures come straight from the cost, markup is quick to apply at the point of pricing.
Suppose an item costs 50 and you want a 40% markup.
Find the profit
50 × 40 ÷ 100 = 20, the amount added on top.
Add it to the cost
50 + 20 = 70, the selling price.
Check the markup
20 ÷ 50 = 40%, confirming the markup over cost.
The selling price is what you charge, and the profit is what you keep before other costs. The key thing to read carefully is that markup is profit measured against cost, not against the price. Margin measures the same profit against the selling price instead, so it is always the smaller number. In the example, the 20 profit is a 40% markup on the 50 cost but only a roughly 28.6% margin on the 70 price. If you need that price-based view — for instance to compare against a target margin — use the margin calculator instead. Mixing the two up is the most common pricing mistake: a 50% markup is not a 50% margin.
The arithmetic is exact, but a couple of cases need care.
Negative inputs and other costs
A negative cost or a negative markup has no sensible pricing meaning, so the calculator returns no result for those. The figure here is gross profit over cost only — it does not account for overheads, shipping, taxes, or discounts, so your real take-home on a sale will usually be lower than the profit shown.