Craft Pricing Calculator

by VARØ Industries

Figure out what to charge — before the fair.

Beta: This tool is in early access. Use results as a reference — verify before making business decisions. Terms
Cost Inputs
$
hr
$ /hr
%
×
Platform Fees
Selling platform — optional
Enter your costs above to see a suggested price.

How to price handmade products

Most makers price by looking at what everyone else charges and shading slightly under it. That is how you end up working for nothing. Pricing upward from your actual costs tells you the floor you cannot go below without losing money.

Base cost = Materials + Labour + Overhead
Price = Base cost ÷ (1 − desired margin)

Materials

Everything consumed by the piece, including the parts that feel too small to count — packaging, the tag, the thread, the portion of a bottle of finish. Small omissions repeated across hundreds of items are what erode a season's profit.

Labour

Time actually spent, at a rate you would accept from an employer. Include the unglamorous minutes: setup, finishing, cleanup, photographing, listing.

Overhead

Costs that exist whether or not you make this particular item — tools and their replacement, studio space, software, insurance, booth fees. A workable approximation is to total your annual overhead and divide by the number of items you expect to make in a year.

Margin and markup are not the same thing

This trips up a lot of people. Markup is measured against your cost; margin is measured against your price. A 50% markup on a $20 cost gives $30, which is a 33% margin — not 50%. If you have been setting prices with markup while thinking in margin, you have been underpricing.

A worked example

$8 of materials, 30 minutes at $25 an hour ($12.50), and $2 of allocated overhead gives a base cost of $22.50.

For a 40% margin: $22.50 ÷ 0.60 = $37.50, so you would price it at $38 or $40.

Selling on a platform that takes roughly 10% means the fee comes out of your margin, not out of thin air — either accept the lower return or build the fee into the price.

Wholesale, and why retail is usually double

The conventional structure is wholesale at roughly twice your base cost and retail at roughly twice wholesale. It exists so you can sell to shops without undercutting yourself at your own booth. If your retail price cannot survive being halved, wholesale is not viable at that cost structure — which is useful to learn before a shop asks.

Related tools

Once prices are set, the break-even calculator tells you how many you need to sell at a given show, and the card fee reconciler shows what payment processing takes back.

Frequently asked questions

How do you price handmade products?
Add materials, labour at a real hourly rate, and a share of your overhead to get a base cost, then divide by one minus your target margin. Pricing up from cost gives you a floor; comparing to competitors afterwards tells you whether the market supports it.
What is the difference between markup and margin?
Markup is a percentage of your cost; margin is a percentage of your selling price. A 50% markup on a $20 cost gives $30, which is only a 33% margin. Confusing the two leads to systematic underpricing.
How do I calculate overhead per item?
Total your annual business costs that are not tied to a specific item — studio, tools, software, insurance, booth fees — and divide by the number of items you realistically expect to make that year.
Should I charge for my own time?
Yes. If labour is not in the price, the business is subsidised by unpaid work and cannot scale or be handed to anyone else. Use a rate you would accept for the same work elsewhere.
How do I set a wholesale price?
Wholesale is commonly around twice your base cost, with retail around twice wholesale. If your retail price cannot absorb being halved, your cost structure will not support wholesale.
Do I need to account for Etsy or Shopify fees?
Yes — platform and payment fees come out of your margin. Either build them into the price or accept a lower return per sale, but decide deliberately rather than discovering it later.