Estimate the minimum price needed to recover your time and costs across a realistic number of sales. Then test the estimate against customer value and real demand.
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The calculator separates cost recovery from desired profit. It does not guess what customers will pay; it shows what your assumptions imply so you can test them with a small launch.
Include the time and direct costs used to create the first sellable version.
Use a conservative sales target. A smaller target assigns more of the build cost to each sale.
The price floor is grossed up for your fee and reserve percentages.
Twenty build hours at $40, plus $100 of other costs, creates a $900 build cost. Adding $50 of monthly tools and spreading $950 across 50 sales gives a $19 cost per target sale.
This does not mean $56 is the correct market price. It means your current cost, sales and reserve assumptions require roughly that price to reach the selected profit target.
Compare the price with the time saved, cost avoided or useful result delivered. Do not invent a monetary benefit you cannot support.
Ask relevant people, test a waitlist or run a small launch. Interest and purchases are stronger evidence than compliments.
Add expected refunds, support time, advertising, sales taxes or VAT treatment, currency conversion and marketplace-specific charges where relevant.
Include time that was reasonably required to create the sellable product. Treat unrelated learning, abandoned versions and general business setup separately so they do not distort one offer.
Build costs are divided by expected sales. An optimistic target can make the apparent price floor too low, leaving the product unable to recover its costs.
No. It is only a planning buffer. Tax, VAT and sales-tax duties depend on your business, customer and jurisdiction. Check current rules or obtain qualified advice before selling.
Do not hide the gap. Reduce production or support costs, improve the offer, change the format, revise the profit target or stop the product after a fair demand test.
Using the example above, the $900 build cost plus one month of $50 tools gives $950 to recover. With a 10% fee and 20% reserve, only 70% of each listed price remains for this model. The table holds those assumptions steady and changes only expected sales.
| Target sales | Cost allocated per sale | Break-even floor | Price with $20 target profit |
|---|---|---|---|
| 25 | $38.00 | about $54 | about $83 |
| 50 | $19.00 | about $27 | about $56 |
| 100 | $9.50 | about $14 | about $42 |
These are cost-recovery scenarios, not customer willingness-to-pay estimates. The lower floor at 100 sales depends on actually reaching that sales volume. Validate demand and include any omitted support, refund, tax or marketplace costs before setting a real price.
Reproducible calculation · October 24, 2026
Build cost $900; recovery per sale $19; break-even $27.14; price with $20 target profit $55.71. Fees and reserve are percentages of selling price, not cost. Halving target sales to 25 raises break-even to $54.29. A total deduction of 100% has no finite solution.