E/MEarnMathby Dynep
EarnMath / Calculators / Business Break-even Calculator
Unit economics

How many sales before the business stops losing money?

Separate startup recovery from the recurring break-even point.

Cost → contribution → unitsUseful before launch.
Your assumptions

Build the break-even model

Defaults are illustrative only. Replace them with your own numbers.

Break-even analysis is a simple but useful reality check. The key number is contribution per sale: what remains after variable cost and transaction fees. That contribution has to cover both startup spend and recurring fixed costs.

The calculator is deterministic: the same inputs produce the same result. It does not use AI to invent demand, conversion rates, market prices or expected income.

What you get

  • Contribution per sale
  • Month-one break-even units
  • Recurring monthly break-even units
  • Startup and fixed-cost burden

Important limitation

Break-even means modeled costs are covered. It does not mean the business is paying you a target income.

For decisions involving tax, law, regulated investments or material financial commitments, use appropriate professional advice and verified source data.

Break-even has two useful meanings, and this calculator shows both.

The first number asks how many units are needed to recover the entire startup cost plus the first month's fixed cost. The recurring number ignores sunk startup cost and asks how many units a normal month needs before it covers fixed monthly overhead.

Core mathcontribution per sale = price × (1 − percentage fee) − variable coststartup + month-one break-even units = ceil((startup cost + monthly fixed cost) ÷ contribution)recurring break-even units = ceil(monthly fixed cost ÷ contribution)

Illustrative example

With $600 startup cost, $100 monthly fixed cost, a $30 price, $2 variable cost and a 5% percentage fee, contribution is $26.50 per sale. Recovering startup plus the first month requires 27 sales; a later month only needs 4 sales to cover recurring fixed cost. If price falls 10% to $27, contribution falls to $23.65, month-one break-even rises to 30 sales and recurring break-even rises to 5.

What break-even does not tell you

  • It does not prove demand exists for the required unit count.
  • It does not include taxes unless you model them as a cost.
  • It does not tell you how long acquiring those sales will take.
  • It does not make a low-margin business attractive merely because the break-even number is finite.

If contribution becomes zero or negative, the correct result is not “more sales.” Break-even is unreachable until price or costs change.