Print on Demand Profit Calculator
Base cost, shipping, and your sales channel's fees — the three numbers that decide a print-on-demand margin.
A $28 shirt with $5 shipping, a $12 base cost, and $5 of provider shipping leaves $12.41 per order on Etsy (37.6% margin) after $3.58 in channel fees. Print on demand has no fee schedule of its own — the platform fees are whichever channel you list on, which is why this calculator uses those verified rates directly.
Your product
Edit to calculateRevenue per order
Costs per order
Monthly
Fixed costs stay in monthly totals, not per-order margin.
Print on Demand settings
Your results
Save this scenarioPer order
After Print on Demand fees, product and shipping costs, and $2.00 of ad spend per order. Monthly plan and storage costs are handled below.
Where your money goes
Per month at 30 ordersMonthly totals
Your saved scenarios
Stored in this browser only — nothing is uploaded, and there is no account to create.
The sale price where one order nets exactly zero — covering percentage fees, per-unit and flat fees, your costs, and this order's share of ad spend.
Needed to cover $60.00 of monthly ad spend and fixed costs. You're planning 30.
Ad economics
An order can pay at most its contribution — revenue after fees and variable costs — to win a customer. Spend more than that and the order is bought at a loss.
You can pay up to $12.42 per order in ads and still break even — currently $2.00.
Print-on-demand profit example: a $28 shirt on Etsy
The provider base cost and provider shipping are separate from Etsy channel fees. The example includes buyer-paid shipping and allocates the monthly ad budget across thirty orders. A free-shipping offer must recover that postage through the item price or margin.
Load “$28 shirt on Etsy” above or open this exact scenario in a new tab. The example assumes 30 orders and $60.00 in advertising per month. Values are calculated with the same fee engine as the tool and rounded only for display.
- Buyer payment per order
- $33.00
- Listing Fee per order
- $0.20
- Transaction Fee per order
- $2.15
- Payment Processing per order
- $1.24
- Product cost per order
- $12.00
- Your shipping cost per order
- $5.00
- Advertising per order
- $2.00
- Profit per order before monthly recurring costs
- $10.42
- Monthly recurring fees
- $0.00
- Monthly profit after recurring fees
- $312.45
Before monthly recurring costs, the maximum acquisition cost is $12.42 per order: revenue divided by that amount gives a break-even ROAS of 2.66. To cover a plan, storage or other overhead, allow less for acquisition.
Production and shipping are illustrative quotes, not Printify or Printful price claims. Taxes, replacement orders and subscription discounts vary. Add any provider subscription as a monthly cost and use a current quote. Review fee sources and methodology.
Find another fee or profit calculator or check profit across multiple products.
Does a provider discount pay for the subscription?
Compare two quotes for the same product, destination and shipping service. If a free plan charges $12.00 per item and a paid plan charges $10.00 plus $29.00 per month, each eligible sale saves $2.00. These are illustrative quotes, not advertised Printify, Printful or other provider prices.
Extra monthly profit = eligible orders × per-item savings − extra monthly subscription cost. Here, $29.00 ÷ $2.00 = 14.5 orders, so the paid plan first comes out ahead at 15 whole orders. That does not establish that the business itself is profitable.
- 10 eligible orders per month
- $9.00 less profit with the paid plan
- 15 eligible orders per month
- $1.00 more profit with the paid plan
- 30 eligible orders per month
- $31.00 more profit with the paid plan
The differences above use the same fee engine and $28 Etsy shirt scenario as the example, holding retail price, shipping, ads and sales volume constant. In the calculator, save one scenario with the free quote and no provider subscription, then compare it with the lower production quote and the paid monthly cost. Include only units that qualify for the discount. For several products, add each product’s eligible units × savings rather than assuming every SKU saves the same amount.
If the paid quote is not cheaper, production savings alone cannot recover a positive subscription cost. Model slower sales too. Annual prepayment, shipping discounts, taxes, currency charges and other plan benefits need their own comparison using your actual terms.
How print-on-demand margins work
Print on demand is the one model here where the platform is barely the problem. Your print provider charges a base cost per item and ships it, and both are costs of goods — not commissions. What determines the margin is the gap between that base cost and a retail price buyers accept, minus whatever your sales channel takes.
That is why this calculator asks which channel you sell through and then applies that channel's real fee structure: Etsy's $0.20 listing fee, 6.5% transaction fee and 3% + $0.25 processing, or Shopify's plan rate. Those figures come from the same verified fee data the Etsy and Shopify calculators use, so the three can never drift apart.
The practical levers are retail price, whether you charge for shipping, and provider subscriptions that buy down base cost. Enter the actual base cost and monthly subscription for each scenario. The break-even view shows business cost coverage; comparing a provider's paid plan with its free plan requires the incremental savings calculation below.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do print-on-demand fees work?+
What margin should I expect on print on demand?+
Should I charge for shipping or build it into the price?+
Is a print provider subscription worth it?+
Related reading
The other 7 calculators
Etsy
Listing, transaction, and payment fees on the full order — plus Offsite Ads and refunds.
Shopify
Every plan at its own card rate, third-party gateway fees, apps, and chargebacks.
Amazon FBA
Referral fees by category, FBA or merchant fulfilment, the fuel surcharge, and storage.
eBay
Final value fees by category, the per-order fee, and insertion costs past the free allowance.
Walmart
Referral fees across all 32 contract categories, including price-band rates, plus WFS.
TikTok Shop
Referral commission and creator affiliate cuts, netted against ad spend.
Dropshipping
Gateway fees, supplier costs, disputes, duties, and the ad economics that decide it.
Compare across platforms
Same product, different platforms — and very different take-home. See how this scenario stacks up on the other marketplaces, or read the side-by-side fee table.