Break-Even Calculator
How many units do you need to sell before your business stops losing money? Enter your monthly fixed costs, price per unit, and variable cost per unit to find the exact break-even point — in both units and revenue.
Calculate Your Break-Even Point
Rent, salaries, insurance, software, and other costs that stay the same whether you sell one unit or one thousand.
What a customer pays for one unit, before any discounts you plan to offer.
Materials, packaging, per-unit shipping, and sales fees — the cost that only happens when you sell one more unit.
Optional what-if: how much profit you want after covering every cost. The calculator shows the units that target requires.
| Result | Amount |
|---|---|
| Contribution margin per unit | |
| Contribution margin ratio | |
| Break-even units per month | |
| Break-even revenue per month | |
| Units needed for your target profit |
How the Break-Even Formula Works
Every unit you sell contributes something toward your fixed costs: the selling price minus the variable cost of making that one unit. That leftover is the contribution margin. Your break-even point is the moment those leftovers have added up to cover your fixed costs exactly — no profit, no loss.
| Input | Example | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Fixed costs | $12,000 per month | Costs you owe even if you sell nothing that month. |
| Contribution margin | $50 − $30 = $20 per unit | The amount from each sale that goes toward fixed costs, then profit. |
| Break-even units | $12,000 / $20 = 600 units | Sales needed before the business covers all of its costs. |
| Break-even revenue | 600 × $50 = $30,000 | The monthly sales total at exactly zero profit. |
| Target-profit units | ($12,000 + $5,000) / $20 = 850 units | Sales needed to cover costs and bank a $5,000 monthly profit. |
- Below break-even, you are subsidizing the business: every month under 600 units in the example above ends in a loss, no matter how busy the work felt.
- Above break-even, each unit is mostly profit: once fixed costs are covered, each extra unit adds its full $20 contribution margin to profit (before taxes).
- The margin is the lever: a small price increase or variable-cost cut raises the contribution margin, which lowers the number of units you must sell.
- Break-even is a monthly moving target: re-run the numbers whenever rent, wages, supplier prices, or your price changes.
Frequently Asked Questions
