Break-Even ROAS Calculator
Break-even ROAS is the lowest return on ad spend at which a campaign neither makes nor loses money. Below it, every sale from ads costs you money; above it, ads are profitable. It depends on your margins, so every business has its own number.
Calculate your break-even ROAS
Advanced Costs & Adjustments
Your Results
CalculatedFormula
Break-even ROAS = Revenue ÷ (Revenue − Variable costs)
Variable costs are everything except ads that each sale costs you: product cost, shipping, packaging, payment fees, discounts and refunds. When costs are counted per sale, this is the same as 1 ÷ contribution margin.
Example
You sell at $50; product cost is $20 and there are no other variable costs. Margin before ads is ($50 − $20) ÷ $50 = 60%, so break-even ROAS = 1 ÷ 0.60 = 1.67x. With $1,000 of ad spend and 100 sales, revenue is $5,000, ROAS is 5.00x and net profit is $2,000. That is well above break-even.
How to use the calculator
- Choose your currency.
- Quick Mode: enter the selling price, product cost, other cost per sale, total ad spend and completed sales.
- Advanced Mode: add shipping, packaging, payment fees (fixed and %), discounts and an expected refund/return rate.
- Select Calculate Break-Even ROAS to see net profit, margin, ROAS, cost per sale, break-even ROAS and a cost breakdown.
How to use break-even ROAS
- Set ad-platform targets above break-even, with room for profit and for days when performance dips.
- Recalculate when prices, supplier costs or shipping rates change.
- If break-even shows N/A, your costs per sale already equal or exceed the price, so no ROAS can make the campaign profitable until pricing or costs change.
- Brands that rely on repeat purchases sometimes accept a first-order ROAS below break-even. That’s a lifetime-value decision, not something this first-order calculation measures.
Target ROAS: adding the profit you want
Target ROAS = 1 ÷ (Contribution margin − Target profit margin)
With a 60% margin before ads and a goal of keeping 20% of revenue as profit: 1 ÷ (0.60 − 0.20) = 2.5x. Your break-even is 1.67x, so 2.5x is a sensible platform target for this product.
Frequently asked questions
ROAS is what a campaign achieved. Break-even ROAS is the minimum it needed to achieve to avoid a loss.
No. It covers per-sale variable costs and ad spend. Fixed overheads need to be covered by the profit above break-even.
No. It works for any paid channel: Meta, Google, TikTok, Pinterest or others.
Related tools
More in Marketing Tools · All tools