Amazon break-even calculator
What can this product actually afford to spend on advertising? Not a target ACoS somebody picked once — the figure that follows from what the unit really costs you.
Free, and nothing is stored. Most calculators ask for a landed cost and take whatever you type; this one will build it from your invoice if you want — supplier price in its own currency at the rate you actually paid, freight spread over the units you can sell rather than the units you were billed for, duty on the customs value. That is where the number usually goes wrong.
What you sell it for
What the shopper pays, including VAT.
What Amazon takes
Most categories are 15%. Media and a few others differ.
Per unit, from your FBA fee preview. It depends on size and weight, so there is no sensible default.
Per unit. Monthly storage, inbound transport, chargebacks. Leave the zero if you are unsure — but it is rarely nothing.
The share of units that come back. Zero is almost never true, and the difference lands straight on your break-even.
What the unit costs you
Everything it costs to get one sellable unit into Amazon: goods, freight, duty and prep.
What the figures mean
- Contribution
- What is left from one sale after tax, Amazon’s fees and everything the unit cost you to get there — before a penny of advertising. It is the whole budget advertising has to come out of.
- Break-even ACoS
- Contribution as a share of the selling price. Spend more than this on advertising a sale and the sale costs you money. It is specific to this product — an account-wide ACoS target is an average of things that have nothing to do with each other.
- Break-even ROAS
- The same fact the other way up: the return on ad spend you need just to stand still. Amazon reports ROAS, so this is the number to compare it against.
- Why VAT comes off first
- On amazon.co.uk and European marketplaces the shopper’s price includes VAT, and that portion was never yours. Calculators that skip it overstate every margin by a fifth. On amazon.com nothing is deducted, because US prices are tax-exclusive.
- Sellable units, not invoiced units
- Freight and duty are spread across the units you can actually sell. One real invoice listed 21,068 sets against 19,052 sellable units — dividing by the wrong one understated the unit cost by more than a tenth, and that gap is often the whole margin.
- When the answer is “no”
- Some products cannot be advertised profitably at any bid. This calculator says so instead of quoting a smaller loss, which is the same thing ChatPPC does across a whole catalogue.