WooCommerce profit margin calculator: your real net margin, not "price minus cost"
Last updated: July 2026
Your store shows a 41% margin. You might be making 28%. The gap is payment fees, the shipping you absorb, returns and discounts — four lines that "selling price − cost" ignores, and that WooCommerce shows you nowhere.
The calculator below puts a number on that gap. It runs in your browser: no account, no email. After it, this page walks through the full formula, the margin-versus-markup trap, and a design flaw shared by every WooCommerce COGS tool — ours included, we get to that.
WooCommerce profit calculator (free, no signup)
Swap the values for your own. The starting numbers describe one plausible small store: they are assumptions, not a market average.
Your numbers
Your real margin
Gross margin (price − COGS)
41,5 %
Real net margin
27,6 %
13,9 margin points that "price − cost" hides from you
- Net profit per order
- 9,89 €
- Monthly net profit
- 1 978,26 €
- Markup
- 85,7 %
Where €100 collected actually goes
- Product cost53,8 %
- Discounts8,0 %
- Payment fees2,2 %
- Shipping you absorb7,7 %
- Returns2,9 %
- Net profit25,4 %
What WooDashAI Business costs per order of yours
On 200 orders a month, the Business plan (€49/month) works out at 0,25 € per order. Put another way: claw back 0,25 € of margin per order and it pays for itself.
Everything runs in your browser. Nothing is sent, nothing is stored, no account needed.
The full net profit formula (and why "revenue − COGS" lies)
The net profit of a WooCommerce order is what survives after everyone has taken their cut:
- Selling price
- − discount given
- − product cost (COGS)
- − payment fees (% of the amount collected + fixed per transaction)
- − shipping actually paid, minus shipping charged to the customer
- − cost of returns (lost postage, restocking, unsellable stock)
- = net profit
"Revenue − COGS" is gross margin. It is useful to rank two products against each other, and it is wrong the moment you want to know what you earn. On the calculator's starting order, payment fees cost under a euro — but absorbed shipping and returns together cost about ten margin points. That is the whole distance between a headline 41% and a real 28%.
Returns deserve a note. A returned product does not cost you its selling price. The item comes back into stock, so the COGS is recovered. What stays is the outbound postage you will never see again and the time spent putting it back on the shelf. That is why the calculator asks for a separate "cost of one return" instead of applying a percentage to revenue: the second method inflates the damage.
Margin or markup? The most expensive confusion in e-commerce
Two numbers, two denominators, one permanent misunderstanding. Markup is measured against cost. Margin is measured against the selling price.
Take a product bought at €8 and sold at €50. The markup is 525%: you multiplied your cost by 6.25. The margin is 84%: on every euro collected, 84 cents stay with you before fees. Same product, same profit in euros, two numbers with nothing in common.
It goes wrong when a supplier says "50% margin" but means markup. A 50% markup on an €8 cost is a €12 price and a 33% margin. You think you keep half; you keep a third. The calculator shows both figures on purpose.
| Selling price | Gross profit | Markup (on cost) | Margin (on price) |
|---|---|---|---|
| €12 | €4 | 50% | 33.3% |
| €16 | €8 | 100% | 50% |
| €24 | €16 | 200% | 66.7% |
| €50 | €42 | 525% | 84% |
Remember the asymmetry: markup has no ceiling, margin can never reach 100%.
The flaw nobody names: margin is not a field, it is a time series
Every WooCommerce COGS plugin stores one cost per product. A number. Exactly one.
Follow what that implies. Your supplier raises prices 12% in April. You put the new cost in the product record — which is what you are told to do. At that exact moment, your January margin report changed. Your January orders are now valued at April costs. Retroactively. With no warning. Last year's report is no longer last year's report.
Nobody says it, because the fix is boring: you need a dated cost table (cost, valid from, valid to) and you have to value each order at the cost in force on the day it was placed.
Our data model has exactly the same flaw today: `Product.costPrice` is a scalar. Saying so here, rather than letting you find out in six months, seems like the bare minimum. In practice, if your purchase costs move slowly, the impact is small. If you buy volatile raw materials, know that neither we nor the plugins give you a trustworthy history today.
What WooDashAI actually computes on your store
The calculator works on a theoretical order. The profit report runs on your real orders, synced through the WooCommerce REST API. Precisely what it does:
- COGS = product cost × quantity, line item by line item, over the period you pick (7d, 30d, 90d, 12m or free dates)
- Gross margin = revenue − COGS, in euros and percent
- Net profit = gross margin − taxes − shipping − refunds − discounts, aggregated over the period
- Profit and margin per product, ranked most to least profitable (top 20)
- A counter of products with no cost filled in — because a margin report built on half your catalogue is a wrong report, and you should know
- A day-by-day revenue / COGS / net profit curve
- Cancelled and failed orders are excluded from the maths
What it does not do (yet)
- It does not deduct payment fees from net profit. This page's calculator models them, the report does not: the gap is exactly your card processing fee, not in your favour.
- It has no per-variation cost. If your 12oz tumbler and your 32oz tumbler do not cost the same, per-variant margin will be wrong.
- It does not read costs already entered in a COGS plugin (`_wc_cog_cost` and friends). Today, costs are entered on the WooDashAI side.
- There is no CSV cost import. On a 2,000-SKU catalogue that is a real obstacle, and we own it.
- Our RFM, cohort, promo-impact and forecast analyses run on revenue, not margin. Crossing margin with customer data is what we build next; we are not going to sell it to you before it exists.
Profit tracking is part of the Business plan, at €49/month. The free plan (1 store, 30 days of history) and the Pro plan (€19/month: segments, period comparison, AI insights, CSV export, abandoned carts) do not include it. Better you know that before creating an account.
COGS plugin or external dashboard: which one do you need?
The honest answer depends on the question you are asking. A COGS plugin adds a "cost" column and a "profit" column inside the WordPress admin, where you already work. An external dashboard reads your data over the API and cross-references it. They are not the same tool.
| Typical COGS plugin | WooDashAI (Business) | |
|---|---|---|
| Cost/profit column in the WooCommerce admin | Yes, that is its whole job | No — we live outside WordPress |
| Per-variation cost | Usually yes | No (product-level cost) |
| CSV cost import | Often yes | No |
| Dated cost history | No (an audit log at best) | No — same limit, stated above |
| Profit per product and per period | Yes | Yes, top 20 + daily curve |
| Flags products with no cost set | Rarely | Yes, dedicated counter |
| Weight on your store | One more plugin to load | None: read-only REST API |
| Several stores in one view | No | Yes |
| Pricing model | Yearly or lifetime licence | €49/month, cancel anytime |
Our take, bluntly: if all you want is to see an order's profit without leaving WordPress, buy a COGS plugin. A lifetime licence for a few tens of euros beats a subscription, and €49/month does not win an argument against a column.
It wins when the question changes. "Which product has the best unit margin and the worst return rate?", "does my Q2 margin hold up against Q1?", "my three stores, side by side?" — a column in the admin has no answer there, and neither does a plugin.
And if you are unsure: the calculator at the top of this page is free and will stay free. It already answers "am I actually making money on this product". Plenty of stores need nothing more.
WooCommerce profit margin FAQ
How do I calculate profit margin in WooCommerce?
Net margin = (selling price − discount − product cost − payment fees − shipping you absorb − cost of returns) ÷ net selling price, × 100. WooCommerce does not store your product costs, so none of this is available in the admin without a plugin or an external tool.
Does WooCommerce calculate profit margin natively?
No. The WooCommerce Analytics tab shows revenue, orders and products, but it has no "cost of goods" field. No COGS, no margin. You need a Cost of Goods plugin or a tool that reads your data over the API.
What is a good profit margin for an online store?
There is no universal number: a delicatessen, a dropshipper and a software vendor do not share a model. The useful question is not "is my margin good" but "does my net margin cover my fixed costs, my ads and my salary". Compare yourself to yourself, quarter after quarter.
What is the difference between margin and markup?
Markup is calculated on cost, margin on the selling price. A product bought at €8 and sold at €50 has a 525% markup and an 84% margin. Markup can exceed 100%; margin never can.
Should I include VAT in a margin calculation?
No — always work excluding tax. The VAT you collect is not yours: you hand it over. A margin computed on tax-inclusive prices is mechanically overstated.
Is the calculator free, and do I need an account?
Free, no account, no email. Everything is computed in your browser: no data leaves your machine and nothing is stored.
Does WooDashAI support per-variation costs?
Not today. Cost is set at product level. If your variations have very different purchase costs, per-variant margin will be imprecise — worth knowing before you subscribe.
Can I import the costs already stored by my COGS plugin?
Not yet. We do not read `_wc_cog_cost`-style meta and there is no CSV import. On a large catalogue the initial data entry is a real cost of entry, and we would rather say so.
Is margin tracking included in the free plan?
No. The profit report is part of the Business plan, at €49/month. The free plan gives you 1 store, 30 days of history, the charts and your top customers and products. The calculator on this page is open to everyone.
Will connecting WooDashAI slow my store down?
No. There is no plugin to install for the analytics: we read your orders, products and customers through the WooCommerce REST API with read-only keys, encrypted with AES-256-GCM. The computation runs on our side, not on your server.
How exactly does WooDashAI compute net profit?
Net profit = (revenue − COGS) − taxes − shipping − refunds − discounts, over the period's orders, excluding cancelled and failed ones. Payment fees are not deducted yet: on that specific point, this page's calculator is more complete than the report.
What happens if I change a product cost?
Past reports are recomputed with the new cost, because we only store one current cost per product. That is a real limitation, shared with the COGS plugins on the market. If your costs move often, export or note your reports before updating them.
Can I track margin across several stores?
Yes, on the Business plan: several connected stores, comparable from one account.
See your margin on your real orders
The calculator works on a single order. Connect your store and the same reasoning runs across your last 30 days, product by product.
Free: 1 store, 30 days of history. Margin tracking: Business plan, €49/month.