Discount break-even calculator
Planning a Black Friday markdown? This calculator shows how many more units you’ll need to sell just to hold the same gross profit. Enter your price, unit cost and planned discount to see your break-even volume before you commit.
Your numbers
At 25% off, you need to sell
71% more units just to hold gross profit.
- Discounted price
- $75.00
- Margin per unit before
- $60.00
- Margin per unit after
- $35.00
- Break-even sales multiplier
- ×1.71
Estimates only, based on the numbers you enter. This holds gross profit constant and doesn't account for fixed costs, returns or the effect of price on demand.
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Apply for fundingDiscount break-even FAQ
It's a calculator that shows how many extra units you need to sell at a discounted price to end up with the same total gross profit as if you'd sold fewer units at full price. Enter your selling price, unit cost and planned discount, and it works out the exact sales lift the discount needs to pay for itself.
It depends entirely on your margin before the discount, not the discount percentage alone. A deep discount on a high-margin product can need a smaller sales lift than a shallow discount on a thin-margin one, because the discount eats a bigger share of a thin margin. This tool works it out from your own numbers rather than a rule of thumb.
It's the required uplift expressed as a multiple of your current volume. A ×1.5 multiplier means you need to sell 50% more units than you would at full price just to hold the same gross profit; ×2 means double the units.
That happens when the discounted price falls at or below your unit cost, meaning no amount of extra volume can make up the difference; you lose money on every additional sale. The tool flags this directly and shows the loss per unit, so you can catch it before running the promotion rather than after.
No. This holds gross profit constant based on the price, cost and discount you enter; it doesn't account for fixed costs, returns, or the fact that a discount usually does change how much you sell. Treat the required uplift as the bar a discount needs to clear, not a demand forecast.
Check a multi-item bundle with the bundle pricing calculator, see whether financing extra stock pays for itself with the financing break-even calculator, or browse the full Black Friday toolkit.