Marketing ROI Calculator
Work out marketing ROI on profit as well as on revenue, with itemised costs, your gross margin and the share of sales that would not have happened anyway. See break-even revenue, the revenue needed for a target ROI, and compare channels side by side.
Enter revenue and costs.
What this marketing ROI calculator does differently
The marketing ROI calculators that rank divide revenue minus cost by cost. SE Ranking and Mailmodo both print that formula. It treats the whole sale as return, including what the goods cost you, and it credits marketing with every sale your tracking attributes to it. This calculator works out ROI on profit as well, says how much revenue you need to break even or reach a target, and shows how far the answer moves if your margin or incrementality guess is wrong.
| SE Ranking | Mailmodo | This tool | |
|---|---|---|---|
| ROI on revenue | Yes | Yes | Yes, for comparison |
| ROI on gross profit | No | No | Yes |
| Sales that would have happened anyway | No | No | Incremental share |
| Itemised costs | One cost per channel | In the article | Five cost lines |
| Several channels | Yes | No | Yes, with share of cost and of profit |
| Break-even and target revenue | No | No | Yes |
| Sensitivity to assumptions | No | No | Margin by incrementality grid |
| Export | Copy table | By email | CSV, Markdown, share link |
Pages as fetched on 3 November 2026.
How to calculate marketing ROI
The common formula is (revenue – marketing cost) / marketing cost. With 150,000 of revenue and 30,000 of cost it gives 400%, the example Mailmodo uses. But if the goods behind that revenue cost 40% of the price, only 90,000 of it is gross profit, and ROI on profit is (90,000 – 30,000) / 30,000 = 200%. If a fifth of those sales would have come anyway, gross profit from the marketing is 72,000 and ROI on profit is 140%.
ROI on profit answers the question a budget holder asks: for every 1 spent on marketing, how much more profit did the business make? It is 0% at break-even, where ROI on revenue is still positive.
Gross margin and incremental share
Gross margin is the share of revenue left after the direct cost of what you sold: product cost, delivery, payment fees. For software sold on subscription it is often high; for physical goods it is lower. Use your own figure from your accounts.
Incremental share is the part of the attributed revenue that would not have happened without the marketing. Branded search and retargeting often take credit for customers who were already on their way. A holdout test, where a random group sees no marketing, is the way to measure it. If you have no test, leave it at 100% and treat the result as an upper limit; the grid shows how much the answer depends on it.
Comparing channels
The channels mode applies the same margin and incremental share to every channel and compares cost, net profit, and each channel’s share of the cost against its share of the gross profit. A channel taking more of the budget than of the profit is the first to question. Keep in mind that ROI is an average over everything spent: the next pound or dollar usually returns less than the average, so a channel with high ROI will not keep it at twice the budget. For per-order economics in paid media, use the ROAS calculator; for cost per customer, the CAC calculator.
How to use this calculator
- Choose campaign or channelsOne campaign with itemised costs, or a line per channel.
- Enter revenueWhat your tracking attributes to the marketing.
- Enter costsMedia, people or agency, tools, content and other.
- Set the assumptionsGross margin, incremental share and a target ROI.
- Read ROI on profitWith break-even revenue, net profit and the grid.
- ExportCSV, a Markdown summary or a share link.