Crafting profit margin.

Margin, markup and break-even

Profit margin is profit divided by the money you receive. Markup is profit divided by what the item cost you. The same trade has both: in the example the margin is under 100% by definition, while the markup can be several hundred percent. Wikipedia's Markup (business) article gives the same two formulas: markup = (sale price - cost) / cost and profit margin = (sale price - cost) / sale price. When the game takes a fee, this tool treats the money after the fee as the revenue the margin is measured against.

Cost per item is every ingredient quantity x unit cost, plus any other cost per craft, divided by how many items a craft makes. The break-even price is cost per item / (1 - fee), the lowest listing price that still returns your cost after the market's cut. Profit per hour needs the minutes per craft: profit per craft x 60 / minutes.

Use the price you would really pay

For ingredients you gather yourself, decide whether to enter zero or the market value. If you could have sold the raw items instead, their market value is a real cost of crafting.

Worked example

Invented numbers, no game attached. A craft uses 3 of an ingredient costing 22 and 1 of another costing 35, so ingredients cost 101. Fuel adds 9 per craft, making 110, and the craft makes 2 items, so each costs 55. The item sells for 250 with a 5% market fee, so you receive 237.50 and profit 182.50 per item. Margin is 182.50 / 237.50 = 76.8%; markup is 182.50 / 55 = 331.8%. The lowest price that breaks even is 55 / 0.95 = 57.89. At 20 minutes per craft and 365 profit per craft, that is 1,095 an hour.

What this page does not cover

It assumes you sell every item at the price entered. It does not model price drops when you list many items, listing deposits that are lost if an item does not sell, or ingredients that are themselves crafted (use the multi-step recipe cost calculator to get that cost first).