Break-Even ROAS Calculator

Find the minimum ROAS your ad campaigns need to hit just to cover your product's costs — then compare it against your actual ROAS to see exactly how profitable (or not) your ad spend really is.

Unit Economics
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Use a period for decimals and commas only as thousands separators (for example, 1,500.50). Variable costs here exclude advertising — that's the cost Break-Even ROAS tells you how much you can afford.
Results
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Break-Even ROAS
The ROAS you need just to cover your non-ad costs — below this, ad spend is losing money.
Total Variable Cost per SaleSum of all non-ad costs per sale —
Contribution Profit per SaleRevenue left after non-ad variable costs —
Contribution MarginContribution profit as a share of revenue —
Compare to Your Actual Campaign
Optional — enter your campaign's actual ROAS to see how it compares to break-even.
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Current ROAS —
Break-Even ROAS —
ROAS vs. Break-Even —
Status —
Profit per $1 of Ad SpendActual profit after ad cost, per dollar spent on ads —
Maximum Ad Cost per SaleRevenue − Variable Costs —
Maximum Ad Cost as % of RevenueThe maximum share of revenue that can be spent on advertising while still breaking even —

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ROAS Profit Margin Business Expenses

What is break-even ROAS?

Break-even ROAS is the ROAS at which your advertising revenue exactly covers your non-ad variable costs, leaving $0 profit before any fixed costs or overhead. A ROAS below this point is unprofitable, while a ROAS above it is profitable, assuming the costs included in the calculation are complete.

Break-even ROAS formula

Break-Even ROAS
Break-Even ROAS = Revenue ÷ Contribution Profit

Where Contribution Profit is what's left of your revenue after subtracting all the non-ad costs that scale with each sale — product cost, shipping, payment processing fees, and anything else that varies with volume. Advertising cost is deliberately excluded because the calculator is solving for the advertising efficiency required to cover those non-ad costs.

For a $100 product with $30 in product cost, $10 in shipping, $3 in payment processing, and $7 in other variable costs, contribution profit is $100 − $50 = $50, so break-even ROAS = $100 ÷ $50 = 2.00×. You need every $1 of ad spend to generate at least $2 in attributed revenue to break even on those costs.

This is mathematically the same as 1 ÷ Contribution Margin (where Contribution Margin is contribution profit as a percentage of revenue) — a 50% contribution margin gives 1 ÷ 0.50 = 2.00×, the identical answer. The two formulas are mathematically equivalent and produce the same break-even ROAS.

Frequently asked questions

Why doesn't break-even ROAS include ad spend in the cost total?

Ad spend is excluded from the non-ad cost total because break-even ROAS is used to determine how much advertising revenue is required to cover those costs. Once the break-even ROAS is known, you can compare it with your actual ROAS to determine whether your advertising is profitable.

What does it mean if my current ROAS is below break-even?

It means each sale is losing money once ad cost is included, assuming the variable costs entered into the calculator represent all relevant non-ad costs. A campaign can look successful on the surface (real sales, real revenue) while still being unprofitable if its ROAS hasn't cleared the break-even threshold for that product's actual costs.