Free markup & margin calculator · No signup
Enter your cost and either a markup % or a target margin %. Get the sell price, profit, and the other metric — so you never confuse the two and underprice a job.
Markup measures profit against your cost. Margin measures profit against your sell price. They are not the same number, and the gap grows as the percentage rises. A 50% markup is only a 33.3% margin; a 100% markup is a 50% margin.
The conversion is simple but easy to get wrong: margin = markup ÷ (1 + markup), and markup = margin ÷ (1 − margin). A contractor who thinks a "30% markup" gives a 30% margin is actually earning about 23% — on a big job, that mistake is real money.
The safe habit is to price from your target margin: decide the margin you need to cover overhead and profit, then compute the required markup. Field PM tracks your real costs against billings on the PM dashboard so you see actual margin per job, not just the number you quoted.
Markup is profit as a percentage of cost; margin is profit as a percentage of the sell price. A 50% markup is only a 33.3% margin. Confusing the two is one of the most common ways contractors underprice — a "50% markup" feels like a 50% margin but leaves far less profit.
Margin = markup ÷ (1 + markup). For example, a 25% markup is 25 ÷ 125 = 20% margin. To go the other way, markup = margin ÷ (1 − margin): a 20% margin needs a 25% markup.
Price from margin. Margin is what actually lands in your pocket relative to the invoice, so setting a target margin (e.g., 20%) and computing the required markup protects your profit. Pricing from markup alone tends to under-deliver margin.
It varies widely by trade and risk, commonly 15–35% markup on hard costs, which is roughly 13–26% margin. The right number depends on your overhead and the job's risk — this calculator lets you test both directions.
Field PM builds the math into the platform — job costing, billing, and forecasting from real field data. 14-day free trial, no credit card.
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