RoasFloor

Break Even ROAS Calculator

The ROAS below which every sale loses money — with 2026 US import duty folded into landed cost. Free, no signup, and the formula is printed below in full.

Break-even ROAS inputs

$

What the customer pays for the product itself.

Landed cost

$15.83per unit

$

The base of the customs value duty is charged on.

$

Where the goods were made, not where they shipped from.

Applies per HTS code — check yours, we won't guess it.

%

Marketplace commission. Zero on your own store.

%
$
$
%
×

1 = full refund, nothing recovered.

Your break-even ROAS

2.13x

Below 2.13x, every sale loses money.

Contribution margin
47.0%
Max you can pay per order
$23.01
Landed cost per unit
$15.83
Customs value duty is charged on
$9.40
Duty in that landed cost
$3.43

How that 36.5% duty rate is built

  • MFN duty (general rate)16.5%
  • Section 301 (China lists)7.5%
  • Section 301 (forced labor)12.5%
  • Combined36.5%
What this estimate can get wrong (2)
  • MFN is a category approximation from 6109.10.00. Rates apply per 8-digit HTS code and range 0.9%–32% across HTS 6109–6110.
  • Annex I of the USTR notice exempts civil aircraft parts, articles for pharmaceutical use, goods already covered by Section 232 (steel/aluminium/copper articles, vehicles and their parts, wood products such as upholstered wooden seating and kitchen cabinets, patented pharmaceuticals and semiconductors), charitable relief donations and informational materials. Product-specific exemptions under HTSUS U.S. note 52 (872 codes for every origin, plus per-economy lists) are only applied when you pick an HTS code; in category mode none is applied. If you import metal drinkware, aluminium cases or similar, check whether your code falls under the Section 232 carve-out.

Rates verified 2026-10-02. Classification is the importer's responsibility and CBP has the final say.

Every layer, its source and what changed in 2026 are in the US tariff calculator.

Without duty this SKU would break even at 1.85x. Tariffs move your floor up by 0.28x.

Add a profit buffer →Save this as a SKU →
TikTok AdsMeta AdsGoogle Search & ShoppingYour floor 2.13x0x1x2x3x4x5x6x7x8x
Shaded area is where you lose money on every sale. Grey bars span the spread of published ROAS figures per channel — reports quote medians, means and loose ranges interchangeably and disagree by more than 2×, which is exactly why your own floor is the number to plan against.

What break-even ROAS is

Break-even ROAS — also written breakeven ROAS, or BEROAS — is the return on ad spend at which a sale is worth exactly zero to you: one dollar of profit above your costs, and one dollar below. It is the reciprocal of your contribution margin:

Break-even ROAS = 1 ÷ contribution margin

Contribution margin is what is left of the selling price after every cost that is not advertising: landed cost including duty, platform commission, payment processing, fulfilment shipping, and the cost of returns. Expanded, that is:

BE ROAS = price ÷ (price − landed − platform fee − payment fee − shipping − returns)

Everything on this page runs off that one line. There is no proprietary model and nothing withheld for the paid tier — the formula is a commodity, and publishing it is how you check our arithmetic against your own. The break-even ROAS formula, worked step by step on one real SKU, shows where each input comes from.

How each input moves the floor

Selling price
The product price only. If you charge for shipping, that revenue belongs against your fulfilment cost, not here — netting it into price flatters the margin and lowers your floor below where it really is.
FOB unit price
The base of the customs value. Duty is assessed on the goods, not on the goods plus international freight, which is why this calculator applies the rate to FOB rather than to landed cost.
Packing before import vs packaging after
These are not the same line. Packing you pay for separately from the goods is part of the dutiable value, so duty applies to it; gift boxes and mailers added once the goods are in your warehouse are not, because they did not exist at the border. Lumping them together understates duty on every unit.
Tariff (origin, category, Section 301 list)
Duty enters COGS, so it compresses contribution margin directly. The rate is built from stacked layers — see How that duty rate is built in the result panel. The tariff calculator shows the source and verification date for each layer.
Payment fee, percentage and fixed
The fixed component is the one people forget. At a $25 order the standard $0.30 is 1.2% of revenue; at $200 it is 0.15%. On low-ticket SKUs it is a meaningful slice of the floor.
Return rate and loss per return
A return costs more than the sale returned. You refund the price, you have already paid the processor, and duty is not refunded when goods go back. Loss per return of 1 means full refund with nothing recovered; lower it only if returned units genuinely go back into sellable stock.

A worked example, with and without duty

Without duty

1.85x

With 2026 duty

2.13x

Duty adds +0.28x

Take the SKU loaded into the calculator above: a knit apparel item selling at $49, bought at $9 FOB from China, $2.40 inbound freight per unit, $0.40 of packing paid separately from the goods, $0.60 clearance, $5.50 to ship to the customer, 2.9% + $0.30 payments, 6% returns at full loss.

Before duty, landed cost is $12.40, contribution margin is 53.96%, and the floor sits at 1.85x. Now add the 2026 stack for knit apparel out of China — 16.5% MFN, 7.5% Section 301 List 4A, 12.5% Section 301 forced labor, 36.5% combined. Customs values the goods at $9.40, not $9, because packing you pay for separately is part of the dutiable value. Duty comes to $3.43 per unit, landed cost becomes $15.83, contribution margin falls to 46.96%, and the floor moves to 2.13x.

That is a 0.28x move from a line item that never appears in Ads Manager, and it costs you $3.43 of the $26.44 you previously had to spend acquiring each order — 13% of your entire advertising budget for that SKU, gone before you write a single ad. Toggle the tariff switch above to reproduce it.

How your floor compares to channel benchmarks

Published ROAS benchmarks are worth less than they look. The 2026 reports below do not even measure the same thing — some quote a median, some a mean, some a loose “typical range” — and for the same channel their figures differ by more than 2×:

ChannelPublished figures
TikTok Ads1.4x – 4.0x
Meta Ads1.9x – 4.0x
Google Search & Shopping3.5x – 8.0x

Treat these as reference only. The useful comparison is not your ROAS against an industry average — it is your floor against what your channel returns for you. If your floor lands above the band a channel typically delivers, that channel is unlikely to work for that SKU at that price, and no amount of creative testing changes the arithmetic. Fix the price, the sourcing, or the AOV instead. The break-even ROAS chart shows where each margin and duty rate lands against these bands, and what counts as a good ROAS works it through by margin.

Once you know the floor, set a bid target above it with the target ROAS calculator, or convert it into a per-order ceiling with the break-even CPA calculator. If duty is the part you are least sure about, start from the landed cost calculator.

How to lower your break-even ROAS

The floor only moves when the margin moves. Better creative and cheaper clicks raise the ROAS you get; they do nothing to the ROAS you need. On the same $49 tee, which breaks even at 2.13x, each of these moves the line on its own:

  • Raise the price by $5. The extra dollars are almost all margin, so the floor drops to 1.96x.
  • Sell two per order. Shipping and the fixed payment fee are paid once, not twice, which takes the floor to 1.89x. Bundles and free-shipping thresholds work for the same reason.
  • Cut returns from 6% to 3%. Every return refunds the sale and keeps the cost, so halving them takes the floor to 2.00x.
  • Source from Vietnam instead of China. The same knit tee carries 29% duty from Vietnam against 36.5% from China, and the floor falls to 2.07x. Check your own category with the tariff calculator first; the gap between origins varies a lot by product.

Try each one on your own numbers in the calculator above. If none of them gets the floor under what your channel returns, the product is the problem, not the ads.

Eleven calculators, all free

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Break-Even ROAS Calculator

The ROAS below which every sale loses money.

ROAS Calculator

Your return on ad spend, checked against break-even.

US Import Tariff Calculator

Import duty by origin and product, every layer sourced and dated.

Landed Cost Calculator

FOB to door, duties and clearance included.

Dropshipping Profit Calculator

Net profit per order after 2026 tariffs.

Target ROAS Calculator

From break-even to the buffer you actually bid at.

Break-Even CPA Calculator

The most you can pay for one order.

MER Calculator

Marketing efficiency ratio across every channel.

TikTok Shop Fee Calculator

Referral and transaction fees, net payout.

Blended ROAS Calculator

Account-wide return, not platform-reported.

De Minimis Duty Guide

What you now pay on every import.

Not another profit tracker

Profit trackers tell you what a campaign did. This tells you what a campaign has to do.

36.5%

Combined US duty on knit apparel from China today — 16.5% MFN, 7.5% Section 301 List 4A, 12.5% Section 301 forced labor. None of it appears in Ads Manager.

13%

Share of the per-order ad budget that duty eats on the $49 SKU above. Spent before you write a single ad.

$0

What platform-reported ROAS knows about your cost of goods, duty, payment fees, fulfilment, or returns.

RoasFloorProfit trackers
Planned before you spendReported after you spend
$19/month flatPer-order fees on top of the subscription
Platform agnosticBuilt around a Shopify install

$19/month flat. No per-order fees.

Every calculator stays free forever. Pro keeps a live break-even table of every SKU you sell — when a tariff or a cost changes, every floor recalculates automatically and you hear about it.

See what Pro includesSave this as a SKU →

Break-even ROAS questions

What is a good break-even ROAS?
There is no good break-even ROAS in the abstract — it is an output of your cost structure, not a target you choose. A 70% margin SKU breaks even near 1.4x; a 25% margin SKU needs 4.0x. The number that matters is whether your floor sits below what your channel realistically returns. If your floor is 4.0x and you buy on TikTok, the arithmetic is telling you to fix the product economics, not the campaign.
Does ROAS include COGS?
No, and that is the whole problem. Platform-reported ROAS is revenue divided by ad spend — it knows nothing about your cost of goods, duty, payment fees, fulfilment, or returns. A 3x ROAS in Ads Manager can be a loss. Break-even ROAS is the bridge: it converts your real per-unit costs into the ROAS threshold that Ads Manager number has to clear.
How do tariffs change my break-even ROAS?
Duty lands in COGS, so it compresses contribution margin, and break-even ROAS is one divided by contribution margin. The effect is non-linear: on a thin-margin SKU a few points of duty move the floor far more than the same points would on a fat-margin one. Use the tariff toggle above to see the before-and-after on your own numbers.
What is a good break-even ROAS for dropshipping?
Lower than most dropshipping campaigns are judged against. Take the example loaded into the dropshipping calculator: a $39 product costing $9 from China, $5 to ship to the customer, 2.9% + $0.30 payments, and 36.5% duty on the goods now that de minimis is gone. Everything except advertising comes to $18.72, leaving $20.28 of contribution, so the floor is 1.92x. A campaign that truly returns 3.0x — on orders that complete and stay sold, not on platform-attributed revenue — clears it with room; that example carries no returns, so add your own rate before trusting the gap. Delete the duty and the same product floors at 1.65x. If you dropship into the US, run your own numbers on the dropshipping profit calculator with tariffs, which takes ad spend per order as an input and returns profit per order, not just the ratio.
Should I use break-even ROAS or break-even CPA?
They are the same fact in two units. Break-even ROAS is a ratio you set as a bid target; break-even CPA is a dollar amount you compare against actual cost per purchase. Use ROAS when your AOV moves around, CPA when it is stable. Both come out of the same contribution margin.
What is the difference between breakeven ROAS and target ROAS?
Breakeven ROAS is a fact about your costs; target ROAS is a decision about your risk. The floor is where profit is exactly zero, so bidding at it means working for free, and one refund streak or CPM spike puts you under. Target ROAS sits above the floor by a buffer you choose — 1.5× to 2× the break-even figure is common practice — and it is the number you actually type into Ads Manager as a tROAS bid. For the SKU above, a 2.13x floor with a 1.5× buffer gives a 3.19x target. The target ROAS calculator works it either from a buffer multiple or from the net margin you want to keep.
Where do the tariff rates come from?
MFN rates come from the USITC Harmonized Tariff Schedule; Section 301 rates from USTR notices. The tariff calculator names the source of every layer, with the date we last verified it.
How accurate is it?
Category-level approximations. Duty applies per 10-digit HTS code and varies inside a category, so treat the output as a planning estimate — your customs broker's classification governs what you actually pay. Every result lists what it can get wrong.
Is my data safe?
The free calculators never send anything to a server. Everything runs in your browser, and share links carry your inputs in the URL rather than in a database.

Sources and last update

Duty rates last verified 2026-10-02. Benchmark ranges last reviewed 2026-08-22.

  • USITC Harmonized Tariff Schedule — MFN general duty rates
  • USTR — Section 301 forced labor actions, effective 24 July 2026
  • USTR — China Section 301 tariff actions and exclusions
  • TrueProfit — What's a Good ROAS in 2026
  • EcomCalcTools — Ecommerce ROAS Benchmarks 2026 by Channel
  • Hawky — What Is a Good ROAS for Ecommerce, 2026 Benchmarks

Duty figures are category-level approximations. MFN and Section 301 rates apply per 10-digit HTS code and vary widely inside a category. These are planning estimates — your customs broker’s classification governs what you actually pay. Full workings on the methodology page, and a step-by-step walkthrough of this exact example if you want to rebuild the number by hand.