Pricing by gut feeling is the silent profit killer in online stores, and a proper
**selling price calculator** is the fastest way to stop it. Most sellers copy a competitor’s number, add “a bit”, and then wonder why gateway fees, shipping and packaging swallowed their margin.
This post shows you a better way:
three ready prices calculated from your real costs — plus your break-even point and the exact discount you can safely offer.
## Why Guessing Your Price Kills Your Profit
When you price by guesswork, three silent costs attack you at once.
Payment gateways take their percentage from every single sale, packaging and inbound shipping sit hidden inside each unit, and VAT rules differ by country.
A price that “feels right” can easily leave you with less profit than a cheaper-looking competitor who did the math. That is exactly the gap this selling price calculator was built to close:
it does the accountant’s math in about a minute, on your own computer.
## How This Selling Price Calculator Works
The tool is a single HTML file — you double-click it and it opens in your browser, fully offline.
You enter your unit cost (purchase price, inbound shipping, packaging), your payment gateway fees, your VAT country and your target profit. Instantly you get:
1. **Three ready prices** — Conservative, Balanced and Ambitious — each showing the pre-tax price, the VAT, what the customer pays, the gateway fees and your exact net profit per unit.
2. **Break-even point and discount floor** — the lowest price before you lose money, and the maximum discount you can offer from your target price without ever selling at a loss.
3. **A print-ready summary** — one clean A4 page with today’s date and every table, perfect to save as PDF or stick next to your desk.
Everything autosaves in your own browser, so your numbers are still there tomorrow. No account, no subscription, no internet — your data never leaves your device.
## Margin vs. Markup: The Pricing Mistake Everyone Makes
Here is the classic confusion the calculator settles with real numbers.
A **margin** is profit as a share of the *selling price*: cost 100 with a 25% margin means you sell at 133.33 and keep 33.33.
A **markup** is profit as a share of the *cost*: cost 100 with a 25% markup means you sell at 125.00 and keep 25.00.
The same “quarter” looks bigger as markup — which is why the margin number is always smaller than the markup number for the same profit.
Pick the wrong one and your “35%” quietly becomes 26%.
The tool has a built-in explainer for this, and every calculation adapts to whichever method you choose.
## A Real Example: From Costs to 3 Ready Prices
Take a real case (verified by automated tests):
full unit cost 48.00 (40 purchase + 6 shipping + 2 packaging), gateway 2.5% + 1.00 fixed, target margin 35%, VAT 15% not included.
The selling price calculator returns: pre-tax price **78.40**, gateway fees 2.96, net profit **27.44 per unit** — exactly 35% — customer pays **90.16**.
Your break-even sits at **50.26**, which means you can discount up to **35.90%** from your target before losing a single unit of money.
Three seconds of typing replaces an hour of spreadsheet wrestling.
## VAT One Click Away — in English or Arabic
The tool ships with ready VAT buttons for Saudi Arabia (15%), UAE (5%), Egypt (14%), Kuwait (0%) and Oman (5%), plus any custom rate,
and you choose whether your listed price includes VAT or VAT is added on top.
The interface opens in English, and the **العربية** button in the header flips the entire tool to full Arabic RTL instantly — your choice is remembered on your device.
## Who This Selling Price Calculator Is For
It was built for sellers who price their own products:
store owners on [Salla](https://salla.sa/) and [Zid](https://zid.sa/),
WooCommerce merchants (the same audience we built our [WhatsApp Orders Pro plugin](https://digistore.troyawin.tech/products/whatsapp-orders-pro-floating-whatsapp-chat-order-buttons-for-wordpress-woocommer) for), Instagram and WhatsApp sellers who quote prices in chats, and small importers who must merge shipping and fees into one unit price.
If you sell in any of the Gulf markets or Egypt, the ready VAT buttons alone will save you from the most common VAT pricing mistake.
## Get the Selling Price Calculator
The selling price calculator costs less than one lost sale: **$11, one-time**, forever yours — no monthly fees, works offline, English and Arabic included.
You can browse the full [Troya Digital Store](https://digistore.troyawin.tech/) to see it and our other tools. Price with confidence — your margins will thank you.
### Frequently Asked Questions
**Does the selling price calculator need the internet?** No. It is one HTML file that runs 100% locally; you can disconnect while using it.
**Where do my numbers go?** Nowhere. They autosave in your own browser (localStorage) — no server, no tracking, no account.
**Does it work with platforms that charge commission plus a fixed fee?** Yes — enter the percentage and the fixed fee separately, and the math handles both.
