Print on Demand Profit Calculator
This generic print-on-demand profit calculator works with any POD provider — Printful, Printify, Gelato, or a local printer. Enter your retail price, the provider’s base cost, shipping, any other per-unit costs (design tools, samples, packaging upgrades), and your sales channel. It subtracts everything from retail using October 2026 marketplace fee rates and reports profit per sale and margin. Use it to compare providers on equal footing or to sanity-check a whole catalog quickly.
What the customer pays.
Provider’s product + print cost, any platform.
What the provider charges you to ship to the customer.
Design tools, samples amortized, packaging upgrades, inserts.
Marketplace fees stack on top of provider costs.
Profit per sale
11.99
- Base product cost
- 12.5
- Shipping cost
- 4.5
- Other per-unit costs
- 1
- Marketplace feeNone
- 0
- Total costs
- 18
- Profit marginProfit as a share of retail price.
- 39.98%
How it was calculated
- Costs: $12.50 + $4.50 + $1.00 other + $0.00 marketplace = $18.00.
- Profit: $29.99 − $18.00 = $11.99 (40.0% margin).
How it works
Profit = retail − base product cost − shipping − other per-unit costs − marketplace fee (if any).
This calculator is provider-agnostic on purpose: every POD service’s economics reduce to the same five lines, so one tool compares them all.
“Other costs” is where hidden margin leaks live — amortized samples, design subscriptions per unit, branded packaging — and it is the line most sellers skip.
Marketplace fees use October 2026 headline rates; provider base costs are always your inputs, never estimates.
Worked examples
$29.99 design sold direct
Base $12.50 + shipping $4.50 + $1.00 other costs = $18.00. No marketplace fee. Profit = $29.99 − $18.00 = $11.99 (40.0% margin).
$39.99 premium tee on Etsy
Base $16.00 + shipping $5.99 + $2.00 extras + Etsy fees (9.5% + $0.45 = $4.25) = $28.24 costs. Profit = $39.99 − $28.24 = $11.75 (29.4% margin).
How to measure
- Get base costs from the provider’s catalog for your exact variant — color and size change them.
- Amortize one-time costs honestly: a $50 sample spread over your first 50 sales is $1 per unit.
- Include the extras that make your brand premium — inserts, stickers, better mailers — they are costs too.
- Run the same design through two providers’ numbers; the winner is often not the one with the nicer website.
- Re-run when a provider changes catalog pricing; POD margins are thin enough that $1 matters.
Assumptions & limitations
Planning estimate
- Fee rates as published October 2026 — verify current rates before pricing decisions.
- Base costs are user inputs by design; no provider’s catalog is estimated or cached here.
- Marketplace fees are simplified headline rates (Etsy without Offsite Ads; Amazon 15% typical referral).
- Ad spend, store subscriptions, and design labor beyond the per-unit line are not included.
- Results are a planning estimate only, not tax or financial advice.
Frequently asked questions
Run the identical retail price, shipping region, and channel through this calculator twice — once with each provider’s base cost. The difference in profit per sale is the entire decision, assuming quality parity. A $1.80 base-cost gap on a $29.99 product is worth more than most “premium feature” differences between platforms.
Anything you spend because the unit exists: amortized samples and mockups, design software per unit, branded packaging upgrades, inserts, and quality-control reprints. Most sellers land between $0.50 and $2.00. If you enter $0 here, you are overstating profit — be honest and the margin you see is the margin you keep.
30%+ after all five cost lines, because POD businesses usually pay for traffic: with 20–30% going to ads, a 30% gross margin leaves a thin but workable net. Under 20%, you are essentially working for the ad platforms. Raise retail, cut base cost, or sell direct to recover the marketplace slice.
Yes — the math is identical, only the base cost input changes. All-over-print and embroidery simply have higher base costs, which is exactly why running them through this calculator matters: a $39.99 embroidered cap needs a very different retail price than a $24.99 printed tee to hit the same margin.