Whatnot break-even calculator

A sale has to cover four things before it is worth making: the commission, the payment processing fee, the shipping you pay, and what the item cost you. Where tax is charged on the fees (VAT, GST or JCT, depending on where you sell from and whether you are registered), that rides on top of both fees and has to be covered too. Anything above all of it is what you keep, and the target is how much of it you want.

If the item came out of a box or a case rather than being bought on its own, the cost to enter here is its share of that lot's, which is worked out in how to split a lot's cost across Whatnot sales. A break is that problem at scale, and pricing every spot in one is worked through in how to price break spots. The cards a break leaves you carry none of the cost, which leftover cards from a break works through on one box.

The two fees are charged on different numbers. Processing is the steady one: 2.9% plus $0.30 in the US, Canada and Australia, 2.42% plus 25 pence or cents in the UK and the euro markets, and 2.9% plus 50 yen in Japan. Commission moves with your market, your category and, from 21 September 2026, your tier, from 8% on US cards at the Standard tier down to 6.50% at the top. Pick yours above and the solver uses the right schedule; the full walkthrough with a worked example is in the guide, Whatnot fees explained. Working forwards instead? The fee calculator shows what one sale pays out, and the profit calculator estimates what a whole show makes.

Solving that for the price gives one line: price = (cost + shipping + target + the fixed fee, taxed if tax applies) divided by (1 less the two fee rates, taxed likewise). The answer is then rounded up to the next whole cent, because a price rounded down misses the target by definition.

Buyer-paid shipping and buyer-paid tax are treated as zero here. Both of them only ever raise the payment processing base, never the commission base, so a real order with either one pays a few cents more in processing than this assumes.

The high-value commission cap is not applied here either: commission is charged on the whole price in this maths. For a qualifying single above your region's threshold the real fee is lower, so the true floor sits slightly below the answer.

Both choices lean the same conservative direction on purpose: the price this page gives you is a floor, and a real sale at that price lands at or above the target rather than under it.

The same formula, run at three targets, is a better way to set a reserve than a single number. Break even keeps nothing and is the price below which the sale costs you money. Safe start keeps 10% of what the item cost you, and it is your safe auction start price: open the bidding there and a one-bid sale still clears your floor. Healthy keeps 30%.

A break-even price is not a target. It is a floor. Selling at it all night is a night of work for nothing, which is exactly the number most sellers never actually work out.

Fee rates checked 18 September 2026 against Whatnot's published schedule, and the tax-on-fees rules against its taxes article as revised 17 July 2026. The schedule itself is dated 17 September 2026; the commission tiers were captured 18 September 2026 and the processing rates 31 August 2026. Actual fees can differ with promotions, categories and taxes, so this is an estimate. Everything you type stays in this browser tab; there is no submit and nothing is stored.

BreakCount runs this arithmetic across your whole week instead of one item at a time, at one flat price. Import your Whatnot Weekly Order Report, add one cost per purchase lot, and every show ends with a real net profit.

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