Break-Even Calculator, Find Your Break-Even Point Fast
This break-even calculator works out exactly how many units you need to sell, and how much revenue you need, before your product or business turns a profit. Enter your fixed costs, variable cost per unit, and selling price to see your break-even point, contribution margin, and a full profit sensitivity table.
Break-Even Calculator
Find the units and revenue you need to cover costs, plus margin of safety and a price sensitivity table.
Break-even units = fixed costs / (price – variable cost per unit). The model assumes price and unit costs stay constant at every volume, which stops being true once bulk discounts, tiered shipping or extra headcount kick in.
How this break-even calculator works, and what contribution margin actually measures
Break-even analysis answers one question: how many units do you need to sell before a business stops losing money. It comes from cost-volume-profit accounting, the same framework taught in every introductory managerial accounting course. This tool runs the full CVP model in your browser, tax free numbers, no server round trip, and nothing you type is stored anywhere.
Three inputs drive everything: fixed costs, which do not change with volume, the variable cost per unit, which does, and the selling price per unit. Everything else on the page, the chart, the sensitivity table, the margin of safety, is derived from those three numbers.
The core calculation
Contribution margin is what is left of each sale after variable cost is subtracted. That leftover amount is what actually pays down your fixed costs. Once enough units have been sold to cover fixed costs completely, every additional unit sold is pure profit at the contribution margin rate.
Math.ceil. You cannot sell a fraction of a unit and still call it break-even, so the tool always rounds toward the next whole unit.
Worked example: fixed costs of $10,000 a month, a variable cost of $15 per unit, and a selling price of $40. Contribution margin is $25, a ratio of 62.5 percent. Break-even units come out to 400, which means break-even revenue is $16,000. Sell 500 units against an expected volume of 500 and your margin of safety is 20 percent, meaning sales could drop by 100 units before the business slips into a loss.
Price sensitivity and the profit table
The tool also recalculates break-even units at price changes of minus 10, minus 5, 0, plus 5, and plus 10 percent, so you can see how sensitive your break-even point is to pricing decisions. Separately, a profit table walks through five sales checkpoints, from zero units to double the break-even point, showing revenue, total cost, and profit or loss at each one.
| Units sold | Revenue | Total cost | Profit or loss |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | $0 | $10,000 | -$10,000 |
| 200 | $8,000 | $13,000 | -$5,000 |
| 400 (break-even) | $16,000 | $16,000 | $0 |
| 600 | $24,000 | $19,000 | +$5,000 |
| 800 | $32,000 | $22,000 | +$10,000 |
Reading the chart
The chart is a plain SVG plotted directly in the browser, no charting library involved. A dashed grey line marks fixed costs. A solid red line rises from that fixed cost baseline to show total cost as variable cost accumulates. A solid green line starts at zero and rises with revenue. Where the red and green lines cross is the break-even point, marked with a purple dot.
Copy summary
One click copies break-even units, break-even revenue, contribution margin, and margin of safety as plain text to your clipboard, using the browser Clipboard API, ready to paste into an email or a planning document.
CSV export
Downloads a cost and revenue table sampled across roughly twenty points from zero units up to the chart’s maximum, built client side as a Blob and triggered as a file download, no server involved.
What this tool does not account for
This is a single product, single price model. If a business sells several products with different margins, a blended break-even figure needs a weighted average contribution margin across the whole product mix, which is a separate calculation this tool does not attempt.
This calculator is an educational and planning aid, not financial or accounting advice. Real break-even decisions should account for your actual cost structure, tax position, and industry conditions, ideally with input from an accountant.
- Investopedia: Break-Even Analysis covers the standard formula and typical use cases in plain terms.
- AICPA and CIMA publish management accounting guidance that includes cost-volume-profit analysis as a core technique.
- U.S. Small Business Administration guidance on startup costs, useful context for estimating your fixed cost inputs.
Decisions this informs
Setting a minimum viable price before a product launch, deciding whether a discount campaign still leaves room for profit, sizing a restaurant menu item against kitchen and rent overhead, checking whether a new hire’s salary is covered by the extra output they enable, and building the cost assumptions section of a business plan or loan application. Any time a fixed cost has to be recovered through per unit sales, this is the calculation underneath it.
FAQ: Break-Even Calculator
The break-even point is the exact sales volume, in units or in revenue, where your total income equals your total costs. Below that point you are operating at a loss, above it every additional sale contributes to profit. It is one of the most fundamental numbers in business planning because it tells you the minimum performance needed just to avoid losing money.
Fixed costs do not change with how much you sell, examples include rent, salaries, insurance, and software subscriptions. Variable costs rise and fall directly with production or sales volume, examples include raw materials, packaging, and per-transaction payment processing fees. Some costs are semi-variable and have both a fixed and variable component, like a phone plan with a base fee plus usage charges, in that case you would split it between the two categories for accurate analysis.
Contribution margin is your selling price minus your variable cost per unit, the amount each individual sale contributes toward paying off fixed costs before any profit begins. A higher contribution margin means you reach break-even with fewer sales and each additional sale beyond that point is more profitable. It is also useful for comparing which products in a lineup are most efficient at generating profit, independent of overall sales volume.
There are three levers: reduce fixed costs (renegotiate rent, cut unused subscriptions), reduce variable cost per unit (better supplier pricing, bulk purchasing, more efficient production), or increase your selling price. Try adjusting each input in the calculator above independently to see which lever moves your break-even point the most for your specific numbers, since the impact varies a lot depending on your current cost structure.
Yes. For a service business, treat one “unit” as one billable hour, one client engagement, or one subscription seat, whatever your core unit of sale is. Variable cost per unit might include a contractor’s hourly pay, software licensing per seat, or delivery costs per client. The math is identical, only the definition of a “unit” changes.
They are related but not the same. Break-even analysis finds the point of zero profit and loss, a single reference number. Profit forecasting projects revenue and costs over time, factoring in seasonality, growth assumptions, and market conditions, which is a broader planning exercise. Break-even analysis is often the first step in a profit forecast, since it establishes the baseline volume a forecast needs to clear.
This model assumes costs and price stay perfectly linear and constant per unit, which rarely holds true at scale, bulk discounts, overtime labor, and step changes in fixed costs (needing a bigger space at a certain volume) all break the assumption eventually. It also assumes you sell everything you produce and ignores taxes and financing costs. Treat break-even analysis as a useful planning baseline, not a complete financial model.
No. All calculations run locally in your browser using JavaScript. Your fixed costs, pricing, and any other figures you enter are never sent to a server, logged, or stored anywhere.
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