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Break-even ACoS Calculator
Free tool
Break-even ACoS calculator
Before you argue about bids, you need one number: the ACoS above which every advertised sale costs you money. It is not a benchmark you can borrow from someone else, because it falls out of your own price, your own cost and your own category fee.
Put your figures in. Everything runs in your browser, nothing is sent to us, and nothing is stored.
Your numbers
Everything here comes from your own account. We do not assume a category fee for you, because they differ by category and change over time. Take the percentages from your Seller Central fee schedule.
Per unit, before advertising
Your figuresWhat that means for ads
Break-evenHow to read it
What the output actually tells you
Contribution before ads
What is left from one unit after GST, marketplace fees and everything it costs you to put the product in a box. This is the pot that advertising spends from. If it is negative, no campaign setting rescues it.
Break-even ACoS
Contribution expressed as a percentage of your net revenue. Spend exactly this on ads per sale and you make nothing. Spend more and the sale is subsidised.
Break-even ROAS
The same fact the other way round, because some people think in return rather than cost. If your break-even ACoS is twenty-five percent, break-even ROAS is four.
Profit at your target
What one advertised unit actually leaves you once you hit the ACoS you are aiming for. Useful for sanity-checking a target somebody has handed you.
Honest caveats
Where this number stops being the whole story
- It is per advertised unit. Advertising also lifts organic rank, and those organic sales are not counted here, which is why TACoS is worth watching next to ACoS.
- Returns, replacements and reimbursements move the real cost around. Put a realistic provision in the other-costs field rather than leaving it at zero.
- Referral and closing fees differ by category and change over time. Take them from your own fee schedule in Seller Central, not from a blog post.
- Running deliberately above break-even can be a reasonable decision during a launch, while you build review volume. It should have a budget and an end date attached.
- If the contribution is thin before ads, the fix is the offer, the price or the fulfilment method. It is not the campaign.
Next step
Want us to run these numbers across your whole catalogue?
Send one ASIN and an advertising report. You get a written review of what we would change and in what order, and you keep the document whether or not you hire us.
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No obligation. We will tell you honestly whether we are the right fit.