Enter your cost and the markup you want to apply to find the selling price, profit per unit, and resulting profit margin.
Markup is the amount you add to the cost of a product to set its selling price, expressed as a percentage of the cost. If a product costs you $50 and you apply a 40% markup, you add $20 to reach a $70 selling price. Markup is one of the simplest and most common pricing methods for retail, wholesale, and product businesses.
The formula is straightforward: Selling Price = Cost × (1 + Markup% / 100). The profit per unit is simply the selling price minus the cost. In the example above, a $50 cost with 40% markup gives a $70 price and $20 of profit on every unit sold.
This trips up a lot of business owners. Markup is profit as a percentage of cost, while margin is profit as a percentage of the selling price. A 40% markup does not produce a 40% margin. In our example, the $20 profit is 40% of the $50 cost (markup) but only about 28.6% of the $70 price (margin). Margin is always lower than markup for the same product.
Tip: When you tell a supplier or partner a percentage, always clarify whether you mean markup or margin. A "50% markup" yields a 33.3% margin — a meaningful difference once you scale to thousands of units.
Typical markups vary widely by industry: grocery runs 5–25%, apparel often 100% or more (keystone pricing doubles the cost), restaurants mark up food 200–300%, and jewelry can exceed 100%. The right number depends on your costs, competition, perceived value, and how much overhead each sale needs to cover beyond the unit cost.