Margin & Markup Calculator.
Margin, markup and gross profit converted both ways — so a price is never a guess.
The confusion that quietly mis-prices businesses: markup is profit as a percentage of cost, margin is profit as a percentage of price. A 50% markup is only a 33% margin. Whichever one you start from, this shows the price, the profit and both percentages — Everything runs in your browser — your figures never leave it. Estimates are general information, not advice: ask us about your own position.
Two percentages, one price
The 50% that turned out to be 33%.
It is the oldest pricing accident in the book: the owner wants a 50% margin, tells the estimator to add 50% to cost, and the business runs for years on a 33% margin nobody chose. Markup is profit as a percentage of cost; margin is profit as a percentage of price. Same pounds, different denominators, and the gap widens as the numbers grow — a 100% markup is a 50% margin, a 300% markup is a 75% margin. This converter takes whichever figure you have — markup, margin or the price itself — and shows all of them at once.
Why it matters beyond pedantry: your accounts speak margin (gross profit over turnover), your trade probably quotes markup, and any target set in one language but applied in the other quietly reprices everything you sell. Check one real product through this tool; if the margin that comes out is not the one you thought you were earning, you have found money — and the rest of the price list deserves the same look.
Common questions.
What is the difference between margin and markup?
Both describe the same profit in pounds. Markup divides it by cost; margin divides it by price. Because price is always bigger than cost, the margin percentage is always smaller than the markup percentage for the same sale — 50% markup = 33.3% margin, 100% markup = 50% margin.
Which should I use to set prices?
Trades usually work in markup because they start from cost. Accounts and benchmarks speak margin because they start from sales. Use whichever is natural — but convert before comparing against your accounts or industry gross-margin benchmarks, or the comparison is meaningless.
What gross margin should my business make?
It varies wildly by sector — a contractor, a café and a software firm live in different worlds. The useful comparisons are your own margin over time (drifting down means costs are creeping into prices that haven't moved) and your sector's benchmark, which we can usually tell you from client experience.
Keep going.
Break-Even Calculator
Margin set — now find the volume where it starts paying.
Open →VAT Calculator
Keep VAT out of the margin maths — price and cost both ex-VAT.
Open →Accounts & management figures
Your actual gross margin, tracked monthly — not the one you hoped for.
Open →Prefer a human with the numbers?
If your price list was built on the wrong percentage, every sale repeats the mistake — a margin review is one of the fastest-paying hours we sell.