Enter your gross margin and the profit you want to keep. Get the ROAS your ads must clear to break even, the ROAS that hits your profit target, and your break-even CPA.
Revenue minus cost of goods, shipping and fees, as a share of revenue.
Profit to keep after ad cost, as a share of revenue.
Optional. Gives the most one order can cost in ads.
Optional. Shows the revenue it has to return.
The calculator gives you the number instantly. Leave your email and we will look at your actual accounts and send back what we would change first.
Break-even ROAS = 1 ÷ gross margin. At a 40% margin, each $1 of revenue leaves $0.40 to pay for the ad that drove it, so the ads have to return $2.50 for every $1 spent before the sale makes money. At a 25% margin the bar is 4.0×; at 60% it is 1.67×.
Use contribution margin, not product markup: revenue minus cost of goods, shipping, payment fees and returns. A store that quotes a 70% markup but loses 30 points to shipping and fees has a 40% margin for this sum.
Profit comes out of the same margin as ad cost. To keep 10% of revenue as profit at a 40% margin, ads can take only 30%, so the target ROAS is 1 ÷ 0.30 = 3.33×. A profit target at or above the margin cannot be reached by any ROAS, and the calculator says so.
This is the number to put in a target ROAS bid strategy on Google Ads or a minimum ROAS control on Meta. Set it at break-even and the platform spends right up to the point of losing money.
The same margin caps what one order can cost. Break-even CPA = average order value × gross margin. An $80 order at a 40% margin can carry $32 of ad cost. If customers buy again, a first-order CPA above that line can still pay back, which is where LTV takes over from ROAS.
Ad platforms credit themselves with sales that would have happened anyway, and two platforms often claim the same order. Hold platform-reported ROAS to a margin of safety above break-even, or compare it with incremental ROAS from a holdout test, before calling a campaign profitable.
Put the Break-Even ROAS Calculator on your own site or blog. Paste this HTML where you want it to appear. It runs in the reader's browser and needs no account.
<iframe src="https://www.sprites.ai/embed/break-even-roas-calculator" title="Break-Even ROAS Calculator" width="100%" height="620" style="border:0;max-width:720px" loading="lazy"></iframe>
<p style="font-size:13px"><a href="https://www.sprites.ai/tools/break-even-roas-calculator">Break-Even ROAS Calculator</a> by Sprites</p>