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Price a subcontractor's work, pass-through costs, or anything you resell — and stop mixing up markup and margin. Start from a cost and a markup, from a cost and a target margin, or from a price you've already set. Every mode shows both numbers and the full math.
Nothing you type leaves your browser. This isn't financial advice — for how a markup fits your whole rate, see the rate calculator.
Markup and margin both describe the gap between what something cost you and what you sell it for. The profit dollars are identical — the only difference is what you divide them by. Markup measures the profit as a percentage of your cost; margin measures the same profit as a percentage of the sale price. Because the price is always bigger than the cost, the margin is always the smaller number — and confusing the two is how freelancers quietly underprice.
A worked example makes it click. Buy something for $100 and sell it for $150: that's a $50 profit. As a share of your $100 cost, that's a 50% markup. But as a share of the $150 you sold it for, the same $50 is only a 33.3% margin. Same deal, two very different-looking numbers — so always be clear which one a client, a marketplace, or a spreadsheet is quoting.
This is the mistake that costs real money. If you want to keep a 30% margin, you cannot just add 30% to your cost — adding 30% is a 30% markup, which only leaves you a ~23% margin. To actually keep a 30% margin you divide by (1 − 0.30): a $100 cost has to sell for $142.86, not $130. The Margin % mode above does this gross-up for you, so the margin you ask for is the margin you get.
You hit markup and margin more often than you'd think: when you subcontract part of a job and bill the client more than the sub charged you, when you pass through costs like stock photography, fonts, hosting, or ad spend, or when you resell templates, presets, or licenses. Marking those costs up isn't gouging — it covers the time you spend sourcing, vetting, managing, and standing behind the work, plus the risk you carry if something goes wrong. The number to protect is your margin: it's what's left for you after the cost is paid, and it's the figure that keeps a busy business from being a broke one.
They measure the same profit against different bases. Markup is profit divided by your cost; margin is profit divided by the selling price. Because the price is larger than the cost, the margin percentage is always smaller than the markup percentage. For example, a $50 profit on a $100 cost sold at $150 is a 50% markup but a 33.3% margin.
Divide your cost by (1 minus the margin, as a decimal) — not by adding the margin to the cost. To keep a 40% margin on a $100 cost, sell at $100 ÷ (1 − 0.40) = $166.67. Choose Margin % mode above and the calculator does this gross-up automatically, then shows the equivalent markup so you can sanity-check it.
No. Margin is profit as a share of the price, and your profit can never exceed the price itself, so margin tops out just below 100% (which would mean the item cost you nothing). Markup has no such ceiling — a $100 item sold for $400 is a 300% markup but a 75% margin. That's why the margin field here is capped just under 100%, while markup is not.
Usually, yes — within reason and with transparency. Sourcing, vetting, coordinating, and warrantying a subcontractor or a purchased asset takes your time and carries your risk, and a markup pays for that. Some clients prefer pass-through costs billed at cost with your time billed separately; either is fine as long as it's agreed up front. What you don't want is to bill costs at cost and absorb the management time for free.
No. Every calculation runs entirely in your browser — nothing you type is sent to a server or stored. The link in your address bar updates so you can bookmark or share a scenario, but it only contains the numbers and mode you chose.
Keep going
Build a full fixed-price quote — labor, pass-through costs, buffer, and markup.
Work backward from the take-home you want to the rate you need to charge.
Gross up a charge so the processor's cut doesn't eat into your margin.