Dropshipping looks profitable right up until you count every cost. Supplier, processing, ads, fees. Enter five numbers and see what's actually left per order, and the most you can pay for a sale before it goes underwater.
Net profit per order · margin · breakeven CPA · verdict
The flat thirty cent processing fee is included with the card rate. Numbers assume one unit per order and no chargebacks beyond what you put in other fees. Returns and refunds can pull the real net lower, so add them there.
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A forty five dollar product that costs eighteen from the supplier looks like a fat margin. Twenty seven dollars a sale. Easy money.
Then reality lines up. Processing takes a cut. Your ad cost per sale is twelve dollars, maybe more once the audience saturates. App fees, the odd refund. Suddenly that twenty seven dollars is twelve, and one bad ad week or a returns spike drops it to zero. Plenty of dropshippers are moving real volume and making nothing, because they never subtracted the whole stack.
This calculator subtracts all of it and hands you the number that decides everything: what's actually left per order, and the most you can pay for a sale before you're underwater.
Selling price, supplier cost, processing rate, ad cost per sale, and any other per-order fees.
Every cost comes off the price so nothing hides, including the flat processing fee most people forget.
Net profit, margin, your breakeven CPA, and a healthy, thin, or underwater read on the product.
Take your selling price and subtract everything: supplier product and shipping cost, processing fee, ad cost per sale, and any other per-order fees. What's left is net profit per order. This tool adds all of it so you see the real number, not a rough guess.
After ads, healthy products clear fifteen to thirty percent net margin per order. Thin margins under ten percent leave no room for returns, refunds, or a rise in ad costs. If the number is negative, you're paying customers to buy from you.
Breakeven CPA is the most you can pay to acquire one sale before the order stops making money. Once your real ad cost per sale climbs past it, every order loses money. Knowing it tells you exactly when to pause a campaign or fix the product.
Only if you add them into the other fees field. The core math covers price, supplier cost, processing, and ad cost. For a tighter picture, put your average return and refund cost per order into other fees so the net reflects it.
Profit per order is one lever. The bigger one is how much each visitor pays you back once traffic, conversion, and order value combine. Run your store through the free Revenue Per Visitor Calculator and see what every click earns now, and what it could.
Calculate My Revenue Per Visitor → Takes about 30 seconds. Three inputs, and the gap shown in dollars.