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POD margins · Free calculator

Print on Demand Profit Calculator

Calculate real print-on-demand profit after base cost, shipping, marketplace fees, and ad spend — and see the retail price you need for your target margin.

Short answer

Print on Demand Profit Calculator

$1Profit per order

That is a 4.1% net margin, $138.00 a month at 120 orders. Your maximum sustainable ad cost per order is $7.15 — spend more than that and each sale loses money. You need 870 orders a month to clear $1,000 profit.

How it's calculated: $28.00 collected − $3.36 fees − $17.49 fulfillment − $6.00 ads = $1.15. Adjust the inputs below to recalculate for your own numbers.

Disclaimer: Educational estimate only — not financial or tax advice. Marketplace fee schedules, ad costs, shipping rates, and payment processing percentages change and vary by country, category, and seller plan. Verify current fees with the platform before pricing your products.

New here? Watch it work in 2 seconds — then tweak it for you.
$28.00
$12.50
$4.99
$0.00

Set to 0 if you offer free shipping baked into the price.

12%

Etsy ≈ 10–11%, Shopify + Stripe ≈ 3%, Amazon Merch royalties are handled differently.

$6.00
120
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Etsy fee calculatorDropshipping profit calculatorShopify store revenue calculatorAll ecommerce calculators
Formula used

POD profit per order

Print-on-demand looks like a zero-inventory business, but the provider takes 45–60% of retail on apparel before the marketplace takes its cut. The two levers that actually move POD profit are retail price and ad efficiency — base costs are effectively fixed unless you hit volume tiers.

Profit = (retail + shipping charged) − platform fees − provider base cost − provider shipping − ad cost per order
Typical POD apparel margin
20–35%
Provider cut of a $26 tee
≈ 50%
Healthy POD ad cost
< 25% of retail
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Worked example: a $26 Etsy t-shirt

A Bella+Canvas 3001 through a major POD provider costs about $12.50 printed on one side, plus $4.99 shipping to a US address. You sell it for $26 with free shipping. Etsy takes roughly $2.86 in blended fees (about 11% of the $26). That leaves $26 − $2.86 − $12.50 − $4.99 = $5.65 profit, a 21.7% margin. Run any ads at all and you are close to break-even: your maximum ad cost per order is $5.65, which on a 2% conversion rate means you cannot pay more than about $0.11 per click.

  • • Raising the price to $32 lifts profit to $10.79 — nearly double — because every cost except the 11% fee is fixed.
  • • A second print location adds roughly $3–6 to base cost and rarely adds enough perceived value to cover it.
  • • Bundles and multi-item orders are the cheapest margin win in POD: the second unit usually ships for $2–3 rather than $4.99.

Why $20 print-on-demand tees do not work

At a $12.50 base and $4.99 shipping, a $20 tee nets about $0.30 after marketplace fees. Sellers who appear to succeed at that price are usually on volume pricing tiers, printing in-house, or charging shipping separately. If you are starting out, anchor apparel at $26–34, mugs at $17–22, and wall art at $30–50 — those are the ranges where the numbers survive a return or two.

The ad math that decides whether you can scale

Your contribution margin per order is the entire budget available for customer acquisition. With $5.65 of contribution, a 3× ROAS target is impossible on a single purchase — you need repeat orders or higher AOV. Compute break-even ROAS as retail ÷ contribution margin: on the $26 tee that is 4.6×, which very few cold-traffic campaigns hit. Sellers who scale POD profitably almost always sell $40+ items or bundle.

  • • Break-even ROAS = retail price ÷ profit before ads. Below that number, every ad dollar loses money.
  • • Organic marketplace traffic (Etsy search, Pinterest, TikTok) is the standard path for POD precisely because the margins cannot fund paid CAC on low-ticket items.
  • • Factor 2–5% of orders as reprints or refunds — providers charge you again for most misprints caused by your artwork file.

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FAQ

What is a good profit margin for print on demand?

20–35% net is normal for apparel through Printful/Printify-class providers, and 40–60% is achievable on paper goods, wall art, and digital-adjacent products. Anything under 20% cannot absorb ads, returns, or a base-cost increase.

How much profit is on a $25 t-shirt?

Roughly $4–7 after a $12–13 base cost, $5 shipping, and marketplace fees — assuming you offer free shipping and run no ads. The same shirt at $32 nets $11–13, which is why POD pricing advice always pushes you above $28.

Should I charge shipping separately or build it into the price?

On Etsy, free shipping over $35 improves search placement, so building it in usually wins there. On your own Shopify store, charging shipping separately typically converts slightly worse but protects margin on low-ticket items. Model both in this calculator with the shipping-charged input.

Is Printify or Printful cheaper?

Printify usually has lower base costs because it routes to third-party print shops; Printful runs its own facilities with more consistent quality and slightly higher prices. Model your actual provider quote — a $2 base-cost difference is 8% of margin on a $26 tee.

How many POD sales do I need to make $1,000 a month?

At $5.65 profit per order (a $26 tee on Etsy) you need about 177 orders. At $12 profit (a $40 item) you need 84. That gap is the entire argument for raising your prices instead of chasing volume.

How this calculator is built

Independently maintained

Written by Sam Doshi and the RevenueLab editorial team. We don't sell the data feeds this tool is built on.

Sourced from primary data

Benchmarks come from public AdSense / Stripe / IRS disclosures and reader-submitted data — never third-party "$X per view" claims. Full methodology.

Last editorial review

Reviewed on a rolling quarterly cycle. Dated reviews are published on the methodology record for each calculator.

Editorial standards

See our editorial policy and disclaimer. Results are estimates, not advice.

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