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eBay ROI Calculator

Work out the return on money you put into stock, not just the profit on one sale. It handles the whole lot, the units that never sell, and the part almost nobody calculates: what that return is worth once you account for how long your cash was tied up.

Your numbers

Nothing is sent anywhere. The maths runs in your browser.

What the stock costs you

What you expect to sell

Cost of each sale

Not sure of your fee rate? Work it out on the eBay fee and profit calculator and bring the number back here.

The rest of the lot

Return on cash invested
0.0%
Net profit
0.00
Annualised ROI
-
Capital turns a year
-
Profit per sale
0.00
Cash invested0.00
Units expected to sell0
Revenue kept0.00
eBay fees0.00
Postage and packaging0.00
Recovered on the rest0.00
Cash back in0.00
Net profit0.00

Your buying limits

Pay at most, for 40.0% ROI 0.00
Break-even sell-through 0.0%

The first is the most you can pay per unit and still hit the return you asked for. The second is how much of the lot has to sell before it stops losing money. Take both to the auction, not the sale price.

We do not publish an eBay fee table on this page, because eBay's rates change and a stale table would quietly give you wrong numbers. Enter the fee rate from your own eBay invoice or work it out on the fee calculator, and everything here follows from it.

No black box

Exactly how this is worked out

So you can check it against your own figures rather than taking our word for it.

ROI is measured against every pound in

Cash invested is the units multiplied by what each one cost you, plus the inbound shipping and the prep for the whole lot. Margin measures a sale. This measures the money you had to put up to make it, which is the number that decides whether to buy.

Annualised ROI

Your return compounded over the number of times that cash could turn over in a year, so one plus the ROI, raised to 365 divided by your days to sell, minus one. A 30% return in 30 days and a 30% return in 300 days are not the same business, and this is the line that separates them. We only show it on a profit: a lot that loses money has no annual rate, it just has a hole in it.

Unsold stock is counted against you

You paid for the whole lot, so the whole lot is in the invested figure. Units that never sell only come back to you through the recovery field, which is what you would get by discounting them, breaking them for parts or selling them on. Leave it at zero and the calculator assumes they are dead money.

Where refunds land

Fees are counted on the sales you keep. Postage and packaging are counted on every unit that went out of the door, refunds included, because you spent that money whether or not the sale stuck. Refunded units then come back to you at the recovery value, same as unsold ones.

Break-even sell-through

The share of the lot that has to sell before net profit reaches zero, holding every other figure where it is. Below that line the lot costs you money no matter how good the per-unit margin looked.

Maximum purchase price

The calculator solves backwards from the return you asked for to the highest price per unit that still delivers it. That is the number worth writing on your hand before you bid on a pallet.

What this does not cover

Tax, VAT and GST are left out, because how they apply depends on where you and your buyer are and on your own registration. Currency conversion is left out for the same reason. Storage costs, your own time, and the interest on money borrowed to buy stock are not modelled either. Sell-through and days to sell are your estimates, not forecasts we can make for you, so treat the annualised figure as only as good as those two numbers.

The number behind the number

Good ROI on stock that nobody can see

A healthy return assumes the listings actually sell. Sell-through is a visibility problem before it is a pricing problem, and it collapses fastest when an account is restricted or sitting below standard.

eBay Canada · 31 Days
+166%
Sales in 31 Days

An eBay Canada store took C$1,991.69 over 31 days, up 166% on the prior month. Promoted Listings produced 98.1% of it, which is the growth and the risk in the same number.

Screenshots on the case file View File
eBay AU · 90 Days
829,607
Impressions in 90 Days

An eBay AU store went from being barely surfaced to 829,607 impressions and 109 units sold in 90 days. Promoted Listings carried two thirds of the visibility and 97% of the units.

Screenshots on the case file View File
eBay AU · Jul to Aug
0.00%
Defect Rate

Negative feedback and late shipment flags were appealed on eBay's own evidence and removed, ratings included. The eBay AU account now reports a 0.00% transaction defect rate and a 0.00% late shipment rate.

Screenshots on the case file View File
Calculator questions

Questions about eBay ROI and sourcing

There is no single figure, because it depends entirely on how fast the money comes back. A 25% return in three weeks is a far better business than a 60% return that takes nine months, and the annualised figure on this page is what makes the two comparable. Decide the annual return you need from your capital first, then work backwards to the ROI you need per turn.
Margin is profit as a share of what the buyer paid. ROI is profit as a share of what you had to put in. A £4 profit on a £20 sale is a 20% margin, but if the item cost you £5 that is an 80% return on your money. Margin tells you whether the sale is healthy; ROI tells you whether the purchase was worth making.
Because return per unit of time is what actually limits a reselling business, not return per unit sold. Your capital can only be in one place at a time, so a lot that ties up your money for six months has an opportunity cost that a headline ROI figure hides completely.
Use your own sales history for similar stock rather than a general rule, and check completed listings for the item on eBay to see what share of listings actually sold rather than expired. Where you genuinely cannot tell, run the calculator at a pessimistic sell-through and see whether the lot still works. If it only works at 100%, it is not a lot worth buying.
Yes, but you supply the rate. We deliberately do not ship an eBay fee table, because eBay changes its rates and a stale table would quietly hand you wrong numbers. Take the final value fee percentage from your own eBay invoice, or work it out on our fee and profit calculator, and enter it here.
Whatever you would realistically get back from a unit that does not sell or comes back as a refund. For clothing that might be a heavy discount, for electronics it might be parts value, and for a lot of damaged stock it is often nothing at all. Leaving it at zero is the conservative choice and it is the honest one when you have no plan for the leftovers.
Because it assumes you reinvest the money and repeat the same result every time the stock turns over. That is a useful way to compare two buying decisions against each other, and a bad way to forecast your year, since it assumes you can find the same deal again and again. Treat it as a comparison tool rather than a projection.
No. The calculation runs in your browser and nothing is transmitted. The only time your figures leave the page is if you choose to send them to us using the form below.

Sell-through and days to sell are estimates you provide. The arithmetic is exact; the forecast is only as good as those two numbers.

Numbers good, sales slow?

Send us what the calculator said.
We will tell you what to fix.

Your breakdown is already in the message box. If the ROI works on paper but the stock is not moving, that is usually visibility rather than pricing, and it is what we do.

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