What a handmade item costs to make and what it has to sell for — candle, soap, bath bomb, perfume or resin. Materials from the batch it came out of, plus packaging, your time, overhead and the platform's cut.
INPUTS
A shape to edit rather than a price list. It fills the four fields below and leaves your rate, overhead, margin and fees alone.
What one batch costs you
$
Everything that goes into the product. Your craft's own calculator gives you this.
Margin, not markup. $9.00 doubled would be $18.00 and a 50% margin, not a 100% one — the price above is the cost divided by one minus the margin, which is what a buyer and a marketplace both mean by the word.
How this is worked out
Cost first, price second, and the cost is the part people get wrong. Materials come in as a batch figure divided by the sellable items that batch yields, which is the form your craft's own calculator already gives you. Packaging is per item. Your time is minutes per item at a rate you set, and overhead is a monthly figure spread across the items you actually sell in a month — an insurance premium is real whether or not it feels like it belongs to any one candle. Those four make the unit cost. The wholesale price is that cost divided by one minus your margin, which is what "margin" means to a buyer and to a marketplace; the retail price is the wholesale one multiplied up so a stockist can double into it. Then the platform's cut comes off the retail price — a percentage and a fixed fee — and what is left is the only figure that ever reaches your account.
materials/unit = batch materials ÷ batch yield
labour/unit = minutes ÷ 60 × hourly rate
overhead/unit = monthly overhead ÷ monthly units
unit cost = materials + packaging + labour + overhead
wholesale = unit cost ÷ (1 − margin)
retail = wholesale × multiplier
you receive = retail − retail × fee% − fixed fee
break even at = (unit cost + fixed fee) ÷ (1 − fee%)
Questions makers ask
How do I price a handmade product?
Add up what one item costs you — materials divided by the batch it came from, plus packaging, plus your time, plus a share of your monthly overhead — then divide that cost by one minus the margin you want. For the worked an 8 oz soy candle above that is $9.00 of cost and $18.00 wholesale at a 50% margin.
What is the difference between margin and markup?
Markup is a percentage of your cost; margin is a percentage of your price. Doubling $9.00 to $18.00 is a 100% markup and only a 50% margin — the same number described two ways, and the reason "I just double it" sounds more generous than it is.
Should I include my own time in the cost?
Yes, before anything else. Leaving the $3.60 of labour out of the worked example above drops the apparent cost to $5.40 and the price that falls out of it to $10.80 — a price that looks profitable because it is quietly paying you nothing.
How much do selling fees actually take?
More than the headline percentage, because the fixed fee lands hardest on cheap items. On the worked example a $36.00 listing returns $32.15 after fees. Anything listed below $10.28 loses money once they are paid.
What margin should I aim for?
Below 30% net there is nothing left for a refund, a breakage in the post or a quiet month, and those are not rare events. A 50% wholesale margin doubled into retail is the shape most craft businesses settle on because it survives a stockist taking half.
Why does the calculator ask for a batch rather than one item?
Because that is the form every other calculator on this site gives you — a wax weight for twelve candles, an oil blend for a loaf, mixed resin for a mould run. Dividing by the yield here means you never have to work out the material cost of a single item by hand.
Do I need a different pricing calculator for each craft?
No. The cost of the materials is craft-specific and belongs in the craft calculator; everything after that is identical arithmetic. This page takes the first figure as an input and does the rest, which is why one tool serves all five.
Should wholesale and retail come from the same cost?
Yes — one cost, two prices. Set the wholesale price from your margin, then multiply into retail so a stockist can double your wholesale without undercutting you at your own stall. Working backwards from a retail price you like is how a wholesale figure ends up under cost.