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Contractor Markup & Margin Calculator

Markup and margin are not the same number, and pricing at a 30% markup does not give you a 30% margin. Enter your costs and the margin you actually want to keep.

Your numbers

$
$
Fully burdened, wages plus taxes, insurance and benefits.
$
Truck, fuel, software, office, insurance. The share this job should carry.
%
The share of the selling price you want to keep as profit.

Result

Selling price $2,533
Total cost $1,900
Profit on the job $633.33
Required markup on cost 33.3% This is the number that differs from your margin
To keep a 25% margin you must mark this job up by 33.3%, not 25%. Pricing at cost + 25% would leave you roughly 20.0% margin instead.

Overhead is entered per job. If you only know overhead as an annual figure, divide it by the number of jobs you run in a year, or use the break-even calculator to work it out.

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Questions

About this calculator

What's the difference between markup and margin?

Markup is profit as a percentage of cost. Margin is profit as a percentage of the selling price. A 50% markup is a 33% margin. Confusing the two is the single most common cause of contractors under-pricing work.

What margin should I target?

It depends on trade, ticket size and how much overhead you carry. What matters more is that the number is deliberate and applied consistently, and that overhead is genuinely covered before you call anything profit.

Should overhead go in the cost or come out of the margin?

Put it in the cost, as this calculator does. If overhead comes out of margin, your 'profit' is really just paying the office rent and you cannot tell which jobs actually earn.

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