Selling price calculator: the price that keeps your margin in Europe

Add up every cost per order that does not depend on the price, then divide by what is left of each unit of price after VAT, refunds, fees and your margin: price = costs ÷ ((1 − return rate) ÷ (1 + VAT rate) × (1 − margin) − fee share). Fees are a percentage of the price, so they have to be inside the equation. Adding them on top afterwards always leaves you short of the target.

Margin is profit as a share of revenue; markup is profit as a share of cost. A product that costs €70 and sells for €100 has a 30% margin and a 43% markup. A 30% markup on €70 is only a 23% margin. The calculator shows both for every price, so you can check whichever your supplier, marketplace or accountant quotes.

For consumers, yes. The Price Indication Directive 98/6/EC defines the selling price as the final price including VAT and all other taxes, and that is the price you must display. Business customers are usually shown prices without VAT. The calculator works out the price including VAT and your revenue after it, so the margin is never inflated by tax you pass on to the state.

Once your cross-border sales to consumers in other EU countries pass €10,000 a year in total, you charge the VAT of the customer's country and can declare it through the One-Stop Shop (OSS). Below that threshold you can charge your own country's VAT. Standard rates run from 17% in Luxembourg to 27% in Hungary, and many products take a reduced rate. Pick the destination, or enter a reduced rate yourself.

Under the Consumer Rights Directive 2011/83/EU, EU customers can withdraw from an online purchase within 14 days of delivery and get the price and the standard delivery charge back. You still paid for fulfilment, outbound shipping, the ad that brought the order and usually the card fee, and some returns cannot be resold. The calculator spreads those costs over all orders, so a 10% return rate is priced in, not discovered later.

Rounding to the nearest .99 can land below the exact price and quietly take you under your target margin. Rounding up keeps the margin at or above the target. The page shows the exact price too, so you can see what the rounding adds.

Until the sale price reaches the break-even price, the price at which profit is zero after all costs, fees and returns. The calculator shows that limit and how many more orders a discount needs to earn the same profit: with a 25% margin, a 20% discount can need several times as many orders. If you advertise the discount in the EU, you must show the lowest price of the previous 30 days as the prior price.

The return on ad spend at which an ad-driven order exactly pays for itself: shelf price divided by the most you can spend on ads per order before profit hits zero. Below it, ads lose money. Ad platforms usually see order values including VAT, so the calculator uses the shelf price too.

Stripe lists 1.5% + €0.25 for standard EEA cards and 2.8% + €0.25 for premium EEA cards (Ireland pricing, checked 10 October 2026). Under Regulation (EU) 2015/751 the interchange part, which goes to the card issuer, is capped at 0.2% for consumer debit cards and 0.3% for consumer credit cards; the rest is the processor's margin. Use your own contract's rate if you have one.

It depends on the category, the channel and how much you spend to win each customer, so this page does not quote a benchmark. A better test is the ads page of the report: if your break-even CPA leaves no room for the advertising you actually need, the margin is too thin, whatever the percentage says.