Print on Demand Profit Calculator
Enter your supplier cost, marketplace fee and sale price to see your real net profit, margin % and the break-even price. Start from an editable Printify, Printful or Gelato preset — then tune every number to your product.
Supplier preset
Presets are rough estimates for a standard unisex t-shirt and are fully editable — always confirm the real numbers in your supplier dashboard, since prices change by product, size and region.
Breakdown
| Item | Amount |
|---|
One sale, watched line by line
Say you've opened your print provider's dashboard and the quote for your tee comes back at $10.85 to make and $4.50 to ship. Those are your two numbers, not ours — a base cost only exists inside a logged-in account, so the figures below are stand-ins to demonstrate the arithmetic. List it at $24.99 with free shipping on a marketplace taking 6.5% plus a $0.20 flat fee, and here is what the calculator does to your $24.99 on the way down.
| Step | Amount | What's left |
|---|---|---|
| Sale price — the whole of your revenue | $24.99 | $24.99 |
| Product base cost, paid to the printer | −$10.85 | $14.14 |
| Supplier shipping, also paid to the printer | −$4.50 | $9.64 |
| Marketplace fee — 6.5% of the $24.99 revenue | −$1.62 | $8.02 |
| Flat listing / transaction fee | −$0.20 | $7.82 |
| Net profit per sale | $7.82 | |
The percentage fee is really $1.62435 — it is shown rounded to the cent, but the running total keeps the full figure, which is why the last two lines still land on $7.82. Beside that profit the tool prints a margin badge of 31.3% · Healthy (7.82 ÷ 24.99), a total cost per order of $17.17, and a break-even sale price of $16.63 — that last one is ($10.85 + $4.50 + $0.20) ÷ (1 − 0.065), the price at which the 6.5% fee swallows exactly what the tee and the postage left behind. Drop your list price to $16.62 and the same order starts costing you money.
One line the table has no room for is import duty, and an EU-bound order now needs it: since 1 July 2026 a consignment worth up to €150 arriving in the EU carries a flat €3, counted once per tariff classification in the box rather than per unit — so five of the same tee is €3 while a tee plus a mug is €6. That makes mixed bundles the expensive shape to ship, which the EU €3 parcel duty and how it is counted works through with the arithmetic.
Three products, three very different margins
The three supplier presets built into this page are all rough figures for a plain unisex tee, and the gap between the cheapest and dearest of them is only $3.58 of supplier cost. Run each through the calculator at the price it would realistically be listed at, leaving the default 6.5% marketplace fee and $0.20 flat fee in place, and the take-home spreads far wider than that $3.58 would suggest.
High base cost meeting a low ceiling
The Printful preset loads $12.95 of base cost and $4.69 of supplier shipping — $17.64 before a single fee. List it at the reflexive $24.99 with free shipping and the marketplace takes $1.62 on the percentage plus $0.20 flat. Total cost per order is $19.46, you keep $5.53, and the margin is 22.1% — just over the tool's 20% threshold, so the badge still reads Healthy. Break-even is $19.08: under six dollars of room between the price the market expects and the point where the order stops paying.
$12.95 + $4.69 → list $24.99 → net $5.53 · 22.1% · break-even $19.08
Cheap to make, with the postage moved onto the buyer
The Printify preset is the cheapest blank of the three at $9.31, yet its $4.75 of supplier shipping is the dearest — cheap to print, costly to move. List at $19.99 and charge $4.99 for delivery. The buyer pays essentially the same $24.98, but shipping counts as revenue, so the percentage fee is unchanged at $1.62. Total cost is $15.88 and you keep $9.10, a 36.4% margin. Note the break-even: $10.26, not $15.25, because the tool subtracts the shipping you charge — it is the lowest item price that works while you keep charging the $4.99.
$9.31 + $4.75 → list $19.99 + $4.99 ship → net $9.10 · 36.4% · break-even $10.26
The same garment at a price you can actually defend
The Gelato preset sits at $12.50 and $5.00, within pennies of the Printful pairing. Change nothing on the supply side and list at $39.00 free — a price a distinctive design or a heavyweight blank can carry. The percentage fee rises to $2.54 because it scales, the flat fee stays $0.20 because it does not, total cost is $20.23 and net profit is $18.77: a 48.1% margin off a supplier bill 14 cents cheaper than the first example's. Break-even is $18.93.
$12.50 + $5.00 → list $39.00 → net $18.77 · 48.1% · break-even $18.93
The contrast is the argument. Between $5.53 and $18.77 of take-home, almost none of the movement came from choosing a supplier — it came from where the price sat and whether the postage was inside it. It is also why markup rules quietly mislead: price all three presets at a flat 40% over supplier cost and the calculator returns 21.1%, 21.3% and 21.3%, three margins within a quarter of a point of each other. The presets are unverified estimates and editable for exactly that reason; put your own numbers in before pricing from any of this.
Costs this calculator can't see
The arithmetic above is complete for one clean order that arrives, fits, and is never mentioned again. Across a real month, four things sit outside it, and they come out of the same margin.
Reprints and parcels that never arrive
A share of orders get remade: a misprint, a damaged garment, a parcel that vanishes. Whether the supplier absorbs that or bills you depends on your agreement and on who is judged at fault, and where it lands on you it is the base cost and shipping again against a sale already banked. Nobody can tell you your rate — count your own reprints over a few hundred orders and subtract that share of supplier cost from the net profit above.
Returns, and the handling around them
Custom-printed goods usually cannot be resold, so a return is a total loss on the item rather than a restock, plus return postage and your own time. Fee treatment on a refunded order varies by platform and by fee type, and some parts are not returned to you — read your platform's refund policy rather than assuming the fee comes back with the money.
The currency spread nobody itemises
If your supplier bills in one currency and the marketplace pays out in another, two conversions are happening and neither is at the mid-market rate you see quoted. The spread hides inside the exchange rate instead of appearing as a fee, which is why it goes unnoticed. Compare a month of payouts and invoices against the mid-market rate for the same dates, then treat the gap as a standing reduction in margin.
Advertising, and the tier you are paying for
Advertising is the line most likely to flip a healthy margin negative, because it is spent per click and earned per conversion. The $18.77 above absorbs a lot of it; the $5.53 absorbs very little. Divide ad spend by the orders it produced and subtract it per order. Same for a monthly subscription that lowers your base costs — the saving is only real once it is divided across the orders you actually ship.
Frequently asked questions
How is print on demand profit calculated?
Your revenue is the sale price plus any shipping you charge the buyer. From that we subtract the supplier's base cost (to print and make the item), the supplier's shipping charge to you, and the marketplace's fees — a percentage of revenue plus any flat listing or transaction fee. What's left is your net profit. Margin is that profit as a percentage of revenue.
Are the Printify, Printful and Gelato presets accurate?
They're rough starting points for a standard unisex t-shirt, not live prices. POD costs change constantly and vary by product, size, print area and region, so every preset field is editable — replace the numbers with the exact figures from your supplier dashboard for a real result. Treat them as estimates only.
What's the difference between this and the Fee & Profit Calculator?
This calculator focuses on the print-on-demand supply side — supplier base cost and fulfillment shipping — which the general fee calculator doesn't model. If you want exact, per-platform marketplace fee rates for Etsy, Amazon and eBay, use the Fee & Profit Calculator and plug the resulting fee percentage in here.