Advertising break-even calculator
Work out the most you can spend on ads for each order and still break even, from your order value, product cost, shipping and payment fees. See break-even and target CPA, ROAS, ACoS and cost per click.
Order value from 0.01 to 1,000,000,000 and each cost per order up to 1,000,000,000, with no more decimal places than the currency uses. Fees and target profit from 0 to 100 percent, conversion rate from 0.001 to 100 percent, 1 to 1,000 orders per customer and up to 10 ROAS levels from 0.01 to 1,000. Calculated on your device. Download a JSON report and CSV files. Up to 1,000,000 characters. Review the settings before running.
Your result
How to use Advertising break-even calculator
- Enter your average order value and what each order costs you in products, shipping and payment fees.
- Enter the profit you want to keep after ads, your click to order conversion rate and orders per customer.
- List the ROAS levels you want to test.
- Calculate, compare the break-even and target figures, then download the report.
Useful next steps
Contribution per order
Contribution per order is the order value minus product cost, shipping and handling, and payment fees. This is the unit contribution used for break-even analysis in Marketing Metrics by Farris, Bendle, Pfeifer and Reibstein (2nd edition, Pearson, 2010). It is the most you can pay in advertising for one order and still break even, so it is your break-even cost per acquisition (CPA). In the example, an 85.00 order with 34.00 of product cost, 9.50 of shipping and handling and 2.9% payment fees (2.465) leaves 39.035, shown as 39.04. Because the break-even CPA is a limit, it is rounded down to 39.03, so paying it never loses money.
Break-even ROAS, ACoS and cost per click
ROAS is revenue divided by ad spend, as in the Google Ads Help page About Target ROAS bidding (retrieved 16 October 2026). Spending the whole contribution on each order gives a break-even ROAS of the order value divided by the contribution: 85 divided by 39.035 is about 2.1775, shown rounded up as 2.18. ACoS is ad spend divided by ad revenue, as defined by Amazon Ads in What is advertising cost of sales (retrieved 16 October 2026), so break-even ACoS equals the contribution margin, 45.92% here. Break-even cost per click is the break-even CPA times your click to order conversion rate: 39.035 times 2.5% is 0.975875, shown rounded down as 0.97. Every cost limit is rounded down and every ROAS limit up, whatever rounding mode you choose.
Target profit and repeat orders
The target figures first keep the share of the order value you want as profit after ads. With a 10% target, the target CPA is 39.035 minus 8.50, or 30.535, shown rounded down as 30.53, and the target ROAS is 85 divided by 30.535, shown rounded up as 2.79. The ROAS table shows the profit per order at each ROAS you list. If customers order more than once, the acquisition cost you can afford per customer is the cost per order times the orders per customer, without discounting later orders, so check it against your real repeat rate. Fixed overheads, returns and taxes are not included unless you add them to the costs per order.