Selling Price Calculator 2026: Calculate the selling price you need to hit a target margin or markup — includes a reverse-pricing tool that most calculators don't offer. Stop guessing your prices inside.
Enter cost and desired margin or markup to find the right selling price
Enter cost and desired margin or markup to find the right selling price
Calculate the selling price you need to hit a target margin or markup — includes a reverse-pricing tool that most calculators don't offer. Stop guessing your prices inside.
Last Verified: May 2026 | Verified by: TheMarginCalculator.com Research Team | Report a Data ErrorReviewed by Marcus R., Lead Financial Analyst, TheMarginCalculator.com Research Team. Meet the full team.
Most pricing mistakes happen at this exact step. If you want a 40% margin and simply add 40% to your cost, you don't get a 40% margin — you get a 28.6% margin. That's because margin is calculated against the selling price, not the cost, and the two numbers diverge more the higher the margin target gets.
This calculator solves for the correct selling price directly, so the margin percentage you enter is the margin percentage you actually get — verified against your revenue, not your cost.
| Desired Margin | Wrong Method (Cost + Margin%) | Correct Selling Price | Actual Margin at Wrong Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| 20% | $72.00 | $75.00 | 16.7% |
| 40% | $84.00 | $100.00 | 28.6% |
| 50% | $90.00 | $120.00 | 33.3% |
| 60% | $96.00 | $150.00 | 37.5% |
Table assumes a $60 cost throughout. The gap between the wrong method and the correct price widens as the target margin increases — at a 60% target, the wrong method misses by $54.
Margin-based pricing (used by this calculator) is the more common approach in retail, e-commerce, and most product businesses because it lets you plan directly against a target profitability percentage, and it lines up with how gross margin and net margin are reported. Markup-based pricing is more common in wholesale, distribution, and some manufacturing contexts where cost is the fixed starting point and price is built up from there in a single step. Neither approach is "wrong," but mixing them within the same business — pricing some products by markup and others by margin, without tracking which is which — is one of the fastest ways to lose track of actual profitability across a catalog.