Should I include my own salary in fixed costs?

Yes, if you want the number to mean anything. A break-even that excludes the owner is the point at which the business covers everyone except the person running it. This calculator defaults your pay to a non-zero figure for that reason, and says so when you set it to zero.

What is the difference between cash and accounting break-even?

Accounting break-even counts depreciation, which is an expense with no cash attached, and ignores loan principal, owner draws and stock bought ahead of sale, which are cash leaving with no expense recorded. Between the two points a business is profitable on paper and still emptying its bank account.

Why does the calculator refuse to answer sometimes?

If a unit costs more than it sells for, there is no break-even volume — each additional sale increases the loss. Most calculators divide by a negative margin and display infinity or a blank. This one stops and explains that the price or the unit cost has to change first.

How do card processing fees change break-even?

They are a variable cost, so they reduce contribution margin directly. On small tickets the flat portion dominates: at a $4.50 sale, 2.9% plus 30 cents is close to 10% of the price, which moves break-even far more than most owners expect.

Agency Break-Even Calculator

A break-even calculator for a small agency or studio, where the unit is a retainer rather than a product: salaried delivery staff and software as fixed cost, contractor time as variable, and the number of retainers that must be live before the studio pays for itself.

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Estimate only — not tax, legal, or accounting advice. This is the published math for agency break-even. Confirm final figures with your payroll provider, accountant, or the state agency before acting on them.

Agencies usually have very high fixed costs and few units, so break-even is a small integer — and losing one client can cross it.

Start from a business like yours (you can change every figure):

Fixed costs per month

Rent, insurance, salaried staff, software — costs that do not move with volume.

Your own pay per month

A break-even that leaves you unpaid is not break-even.

Price per unit

Variable cost per unit

What that one unit costs you to make or deliver.

Show cash break-even tooLoan principal, owner draws and stock bought ahead of sale are cash leaving the business with no expense recorded. This is the gap between profitable and solvent.

Break-even retainers

Break-even revenue

$59,434

Contribution margin

$5,300 / unit

Margin ratio

70.67%

Margin of safety

0.94%

Shaded red is loss, shaded blue is profit. The dashed line is fixed costs, which do not move with volume.

Operating leverage is 106×: a 10% change in sales moves profit by about 1060%.

Which lever moves break-even most

1Price ±10%swings 2 retainers
2Fixed costs ±10%swings 1 retainers
3Variable cost ±10%swings 1 retainers

A price change moves the denominator of the whole calculation, which is why it almost always beats a cost cut of the same percentage — and why discounting is more expensive than it looks.

Method: Contribution margin = price − variable cost per unit, including payment processing and refunds. Break-even units = fixed costs (with owner pay) ÷ contribution margin. Cash break-even adds loan principal, owner draws and inventory build, and removes depreciation. Every step is shown on the page and pinned by golden tests in tests/breakEven.test.ts.

🎓 Understand this tool

What it is

Break-even is the volume at which what you take in exactly covers what you spend — the point where a month stops being a loss. It is a planning number rather than a target: below it the business is consuming money, above it each additional sale contributes to profit.

How it works

Every sale contributes its price minus the costs that only happened because of that sale. That figure is contribution margin, and fixed costs divided by it gives the volume where the two lines cross. The chart plots revenue against total cost so you can see the crossing rather than take it on trust.

Getting the most from it

Add up the costs that do not change with volume — rent, insurance, salaried staff, software — and put your own pay among them.
Enter the price of one unit and what that unit costs you to make or deliver.
Open the costs people forget: card processing has a flat part that matters enormously on small tickets, and a refund returns the price but rarely the cost.
Enter the volume you actually expect, which turns the result into a margin of safety rather than an abstract number.
Switch on cash break-even if you have a loan, take draws, or buy stock ahead of selling it.

Reading your result

The units figure is how many you must sell to cover everything; the revenue figure is the same point in money. Margin of safety says how far your expected volume sits above that line, which is the more useful number month to month — a 4% margin of safety and a 40% one are different businesses.

What it can't tell you

It assumes the price and the per-unit cost hold across the whole range, which stops being true at the point where you need a second oven, a second van, or a second hire. It also assumes you sell what you make. It cannot tell you whether the volume is achievable — that is a market question, not an arithmetic one.

Frequently asked questions

Break-even units = fixed costs ÷ contribution margin per unit, where contribution margin is the price minus every cost that occurs only because you sold that unit. Break-even revenue is that unit count multiplied by the price. Both are shown step by step under "Show the math".

Part of: Pricing, Margin and Break-Even →

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📈Agency Break-Even Calculator