Break-Even Calculator

Enter your monthly fixed costs (rent, salaries, software, insurance — anything you pay even if you sell nothing). Then enter the variable cost per unit (what each sale costs you in materials, shipping, and processing fees) and the price per unit (what the customer pays).

Optionally, enter projected monthly unit sales. The calculator will then show how many months it will take to break even at that volume, and your projected monthly profit (or loss) at that volume.

The chart below the result panel shows your total revenue and total costs across a range of unit volumes. Where the two lines cross is the break-even point. Below the intersection is the loss zone (red); above it is the profit zone (green).

A practical example: a coffee shop has $8,000/month in fixed costs (rent, baristas, insurance), pays $1.50 per drink in materials, and charges $5.50 per drink. Contribution margin per drink: $4.00. Break-even: 2,000 drinks per month, or about 67 per day open. At 100 drinks per day, monthly profit is $4,000.

The headline number is your break-even units per month — the volume at which revenue exactly covers all your costs. Below this volume, you lose money; above it, you profit. The break-even revenue is just break-even units × price.

The contribution margin per unit is the dollars left from each sale after paying variable costs. This amount "contributes" toward covering fixed costs, and once fixed costs are covered, every additional contribution-margin dollar is profit. Higher contribution margins reduce your break-even volume dramatically.

The contribution margin ratio (CM ÷ price) tells you what fraction of every revenue dollar goes toward covering fixed costs and then profit. A 50% contribution margin ratio means half of every sale is "useful" margin; the other half went to variable costs.

There are three levers to lower your break-even point. The fastest is raising your price — every dollar of price increase flows directly to contribution margin. The slowest is cutting fixed costs, but those cuts compound permanently. Reducing variable cost per unit (better supplier deals, more efficient processes, eliminating fees) is a middle option.

For startups operating intentionally below break-even, this calculator helps you plan: combine the projected monthly burn (negative profit) with your cash on hand to estimate runway. The Startup Runway Calculator on this site does that math automatically with revenue growth modeling.