Break-Even Calculator
The one number a business plan is actually for: how many you have to sell before you stop losing money. Type three figures, get the answer and the working — nothing is stored, nothing is sent anywhere.
How it works
Fixed costs per month
Everything you pay in a month with zero sales: rent, salaries, subscriptions, the accountant.
Price and variable cost
What one unit sells for, and what one unit costs you to deliver — materials, shipping, payment fees.
Read the answer and the sensitivity
Units, revenue, contribution margin, and what happens if you move the price 10% instead of the cost. The last row is usually the surprising one.
How it is worked out
Every unit you sell leaves you price minus variable cost. That leftover is the contribution margin, and it is the only money that goes toward the rent, the software and the accountant. Break-even is the point where the contributions have covered the fixed costs exactly:
units = fixed costs ÷ (price − variable cost)
Two things fall out of that formula, and they are the reason it is worth writing down rather than guessing. First, if the variable cost is at or above the price, there is no break-even: selling more makes the hole deeper, and no amount of volume fixes it. Second, a small price rise moves the answer far more than a small cost cut, because the price sits in the denominator — which is why "we'll make it up on volume" is usually the wrong instinct.
What the same number costs elsewhere
| Service | What you get | Price |
|---|---|---|
| LivePlan (Premium) | Adds benchmarks and multi-scenario forecasting | $40.00 / month |
| LivePlan (Standard) | Business plan builder with financial forecasting | $20.00 / month |
| This page | The qualified referring-domain count, computed from the public Common Crawl web graph | Free |
Prices read from each vendor's own pricing page on 2026-09-07. We link the page so you can check it yourself; they change them without telling us, and a price we cannot show you the source for is a price we do not print.
What this does not do
It assumes one product at one price with one variable cost, and that fixed costs stay fixed. Real businesses have a mix, discounts, and costs that step up when you grow. Treat the number as the floor you must clear, not as a forecast — and if the honest answer is "we don't know the variable cost yet", that is the finding, and it is worth more than a confident chart.
Free page, or the file
The tool above is free and stays free. The file is the same work done already, laid out, and yours offline — buy it if that is worth 79 euro of your time, not because the page held anything back.
This page
- Break-even units and revenue, instantly
- The contribution margin, shown not hidden
- A warning when there is no break-even at all
- Nothing typed leaves your browser
The Business Plan Playbook
- The full plan workbook, not one formula
- Cash-flow, runway and scenario sheets, linked up
- Every assumption on its own labelled cell
- Written to be handed to a bank or a partner
One payment, no account on this site, no renewal. Gumroad handles the checkout and the VAT; we never see your card.
Questions
What counts as a fixed cost?
Anything you pay whether or not you sell anything this month: rent, salaries, subscriptions, insurance, the accountant. If the invoice arrives on a month with zero sales, it is fixed.
What counts as variable?
Anything that only exists because a unit was sold: materials, shipping, payment fees, per-unit licence costs, a commission. If you sold none this month, it would be zero.
Is my data sent anywhere?
No. The arithmetic runs in your browser. There is no analytics script, no cookie and no server call on this page — you can check with the network tab, and with the page open you can pull the plug and it still works.
Why does it sometimes say there is no break-even?
Because the variable cost is at or above the price, so each sale loses money. The calculator refuses to divide by a negative margin and print a plausible-looking number, which is what most of them do.
Is this a free alternative to business plan software?
For this one calculation, yes, and without the sign-up. Business plan tools wrap the same arithmetic in a document builder, a template library and a place to store versions. If you need the document, they are worth their price. If you need the number, you are looking at it.
Where do I put my own salary?
In fixed costs, at the figure you actually need to live on — not zero, and not "whatever is left". A plan that breaks even only because the founder is unpaid has not broken even; it has moved the loss somewhere it does not get counted.
Can I use it for a service business?
Yes. A unit is an hour, a retainer or a project, whatever you sell repeatedly. The variable cost is what delivering one more of them costs you — subcontractors, travel, software seats. If nothing extra is spent per unit, put zero, and the answer becomes fixed costs divided by price.
The other free tools
Same rules: no account, nothing stored, and the working shown.
A free, open alternative to business plan software
People search for open source business plan software when they want one number, not a document: at this price and this cost, how many do I have to sell? Installing something to answer that is a lot of ceremony for one division. This page does the division, shows the working, and keeps the figures on your own machine — the arithmetic never leaves the browser tab, which is a stronger privacy guarantee than any policy page can give you.
What business plan tools give you that this does not
A structure to fill in, a place to keep versions, and something you can hand to a bank. Those are real, and if you are raising money you need them. What they do not give you is a different answer to this question: the formula is the same one, and it has not changed in a century.
The number that decides whether the plan is worth writing
Work out break-even first, before the document. If the honest answer is a volume you cannot picture yourself reaching, no amount of formatting will fix it, and you have saved yourself a weekend. If the answer is comfortable, the plan becomes an easier thing to write, because the hard part is already settled.
Then plan the year around it
Break-even is a monthly threshold; the year is where it either holds or does not. The free annual budget planner lays twelve months out side by side, and the rest are on the free tools page.