Enter any two values, cost, selling price or margin, and the third solves itself as you type. No signup, no email wall, just the numbers.
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See How VidyBack WorksProfit margin is the percentage of your selling price that's actually profit, after covering what the product cost you to make or source. It's the single number that tells you whether a sale is genuinely worth making, not just whether it happened. Two stores can have the same revenue and completely different outcomes depending on their margins: one is building a real business, the other is running on fumes.
Margin is profit divided by selling price. Markup is profit divided by cost price. Both describe the exact same dollar amount of profit, just measured against a different starting point, which is why markup always looks like a bigger number than margin on the same sale.
Worked example: A product costs $20 to make and sells for $50.
Profit = $50 − $20 = $30
Margin = $30 ÷ $50 × 100 = 60%
Markup = $30 ÷ $20 × 100 = 150%
Mixing these two up is one of the most common pricing mistakes in ecommerce. Pricing something at a "50% markup" thinking you're hitting a 50% margin actually leaves you at a 33% margin, a gap that quietly eats into profitability at scale.
There's no universal number, since cost structures vary wildly by product type. As a general reference point:
| Category | Typical Margin Range |
|---|---|
| Apparel & Fashion | 40% – 60% |
| Beauty & Cosmetics | 50% – 70% |
| Jewelry & Accessories | 50% – 70% |
| Electronics & Gadgets | 10% – 30% |
| Food & Beverage (CPG) | 5% – 20% |
| Home & General Merchandise | 20% – 40% |
| Print-on-Demand & Digital | 60% – 90%+ |
These are gross margins, before ad spend, salaries and other operating costs. The "true margin" fields in the calculator above go a layer deeper, factoring in payment processing fees and per-unit shipping, which is a more honest picture of what actually lands in your pocket per sale.
Most ecommerce categories aim for a gross margin between 20% and 50%. Fashion and beauty products often run 40-60%, general merchandise and electronics tend to run 10-30%, and digital or print-on-demand products can exceed 70-90% since there's little to no physical cost of goods.
Margin is profit divided by selling price. Markup is profit divided by cost price. They describe the same dollar amount of profit from two different starting points, so markup is always a higher percentage than margin on the same sale.
Subtract your cost price from your selling price to get profit, then divide that profit by the selling price and multiply by 100. For example, a product that costs $20 and sells for $50 has a $30 profit and a 60% profit margin.
Gross margin only accounts for the cost price of the product. True margin also subtracts payment processing fees and per-unit shipping costs, giving a more realistic picture of what you actually keep from each sale.
