What is a break-even point?
Your break-even point is the number of orders a month at which the business makes exactly nothing: every cost is paid and there is no profit left. Below it, each month costs you money. Above it, every extra order drops its whole margin to profit.
Break-even orders = fixed costs ÷ profit per order
Most eCommerce teams run on a revenue number instead: this month’s target, last year’s comparison, the figure on the dashboard everyone refreshes. Revenue is easy to see and says nothing about whether the month made money. Two stores can book the same $81,000 and one has covered its overheads with room to spare while the other has paid for a lot of stock, shipping and ads and is $3,000 further behind. The difference is where the break-even line sits, and most teams have never drawn it.
Drawing it changes how a slow week feels. “Sales are down 12%” is a mood; “we are 90 orders short of covering the month” is a problem with a size, and problems with a size get solved.
Fixed costs, profit per order and the line between them
Two kinds of cost, one line between them. Here they are worked through on the calculator’s example: a $90 order, $15,000 of fixed costs, 900 orders a month.
Profit per order
What one order leaves after every cost that scales with it: the goods, shipping and packaging, the percentage the payment provider takes and the marketing it took to win the order. It is the only money an order can put towards rent, wages and profit.
Profit per order = AOV − product & shipping − fees − marketing per order
Example$90 − $42 − $3.15 fees − $25 marketing = $19.85, a 22.1% margin per order.
Fixed costs
Everything you pay whether you sell or not: wages, rent, the warehouse, software, the agency retainer, your own salary. They do not move with orders, which is why they are the denominator everyone forgets. At $19.85 an order, a $2,000 tool is 100 more orders a month, every month.
Example$15,000 a month, so every $1,000 of it needs about 50 orders to cover.
Break-even orders, revenue and days
Divide fixed costs by profit per order and you have the order where the month gets to zero. Multiply by the order value for break-even revenue, the figure to compare against your Shopify dashboard. Divide by the days in a month for the number you can actually run the week on.
Break-even revenue = break-even orders × AOV
Example$15,000 ÷ $19.85 = 756 orders, $68,010 of revenue, about 25 a day.
Margin of safety
How far your current volume sits above the line, as a share of that volume. It is the number that tells you how nervous to be, and the one that quietly shrinks when a fixed cost is added or a discount becomes permanent.
Margin of safety = (current orders − break-even orders) ÷ current orders
Example(900 − 756) ÷ 900 = 16%: sales can fall 16% before the month loses money, and the last 144 orders are the $2,865 of profit.
Orders for a profit target
Treat the profit you want as one more fixed cost to cover. It turns “we want to make $10,000 a month” into “we need 1,260 orders”, which is something a marketing plan can be built against.
Orders for a target = (fixed costs + profit target) ÷ profit per order
Example($15,000 + $10,000) ÷ $19.85 = 1,260 orders, or $113,350 of revenue.
Notice how little the example keeps. A healthy-looking 22% margin per order and 900 orders a month ends at $2,865 of profit on $81,000 of sales, 3.5 cents in the dollar, because the fixed costs eat 84% of what the orders bring in. That is a normal online store, and it is why the line matters more than the revenue.
eCommerce break-even benchmarks for 2026
Where the money goes in a typical online store, so you can see which of your numbers is out of line. Shares of revenue, direct-to-consumer stores:
| Cost | Share of revenue |
|---|---|
| Product, shipping & fees | 44–48% |
| Shipping | 7–14% |
| Payment fees | 2–4% |
| Marketing | 18–37% |
| Fixed costs | 17–30% |
| Profit after everything | 3–4% |
Fixed costs are the line that depends most on size, because the same people and software are spread over more or fewer orders:
| Annual revenue (US$) | Lean | Typical | Bloated |
|---|---|---|---|
| Under $1M | 25% | 30% | 40% |
| $1M–$10M | 20% | 23% | 27% |
| $10M–$50M | 18% | 22% | 26% |
| $50M+ | 12% | 17% | 22% |
On margin of safety there is no dataset, only the rule accountants use: 20% or more is healthy, and a business with high fixed costs or unpredictable demand should aim for 40% or more. Under 10% is high risk: one quiet week from a loss. The example store’s 16% sits in the 10–20% band Xero calls moderate risk.
The sobering context is how many stores never clear the line at all. Across $10.1 billion of revenue from Shopify brands, 31% run a margin per order under 10%, and 52% are still underwater on a customer after their first order. In Finaloop’s data the median direct-to-consumer brand kept 3–4% of revenue as profit in 2024; November was the best month at 10%, and July, September and October fell to 2%.
How to lower your break-even point
Six levers, roughly in the order they pay off. Each one is costed on the example store, and every one of them is a number you can change in the calculator.
1.Raise the price
The fastest lever. Almost every dollar of a price rise lands in profit per order, because the product, shipping and marketing cost the same. $5 more on the $90 order takes profit per order from $19.85 to $24.68 and the break-even from 756 to 608 orders. Nothing else on this list comes close.
2.Bring the marketing cost per order down
For most stores the biggest cost after the product and the one that moves most month to month. Cutting the example’s $25 to $22.50 saves 85 orders a month off the line. Better creative, a cleaner account structure and a sharper offer do it without touching the product; that is the work of Paid Advertising, and the ROAS calculator turns the same margin into the return the ads must hit.
3.Grow the basket
A bigger order carries the same shipping and the same acquisition cost, so nearly all of the extra is profit per order and the order count you need falls with it. The AOV calculator shows what a lift is worth each month.
4.Trim product and shipping cost
Bigger runs of the products that have proven they sell, tiered pricing, a second supplier quote every year, carrier rates compared and boxes sized to the product. 5% off the example’s $42 saves 73 orders a month.
5.Hold the line on fixed costs
Every subscription, retainer and hire moves the line up by its cost divided by your profit per order. Before taking one on, run it here: a $2,000 a month tool is 100 orders, every month. If it does not bring in or save more than that, it is a worse business than the one you have.
6.Keep a cushion and plan in orders a day
Aim for a margin of safety of 20% or more, and carry the break-even around as a daily number. A profit target in dollars becomes a number of orders, which at your conversion rate becomes sessions, which at your cost per click becomes an ad budget. The ad budget calculator runs that chain backwards.