Tools · calculator
The return on ad spend where an order stops losing money, with the shipping label, the card fee and the orders that come back all paid for. Then the target for the profit you want to keep.
A ROAS of 2.0 means the platform counted two dollars of sales for each dollar of ads. It says nothing about what those sales cost you. On the worked example an $80.00 order leaves $37.69 once the goods, the label, the packing and the fees are paid, so an ad that cost $40.00 to win it has lost money before a single order comes back.
The shortcut many pages print is 1 ÷ gross margin, which takes off the goods and nothing else: $80.00 ÷ $52.00, or 1.54. The label, the packing and the card fee are paid on every order the ad brings in, and the processor takes its fee on the whole amount the card pays, tax and shipping included.
Then the orders that come back. A refund does not undo an order. Its outbound label and its packing are spent, and the card fee stays with the processor: Shopify Payments and Stripe both say so in their refund documentation. The return label is often yours as well, and some of what comes back cannot be sold again. On the example one return costs $67.60, and at one order in ten that takes $6.76 off every order you sell.
What the calculator does not claim. It works on one average first order, so a product with a thin margin needs its own run, and costs that do not grow with orders are outside it. There is no good ROAS figure on this page: the benchmarks I found on the first page of results carried no source I could check.
One store has more than one breakeven, because each platform divides a different number. On the worked example:
2.59Items after discountsShopify’s marketing report counts sales after discounts and returns, without tax or shipping. Hold the ROAS Shopify shows you against this line.
2.79The order total, tax inShopify’s Meta integration sends each order’s total price, with taxes and duties included. A Meta ROAS on that value has to clear the higher line.
2.33With refunds taken outGoogle Ads restates or removes a refunded conversion only when you upload the adjustment, within 54 days. With the uploads its revenue is smaller, and so is the ROAS that breaks even.
Only for a store whose goods, labels and fees cost nothing. At 100 percent, a ROAS of 1.0, the ad takes the whole of what it sold. The order still has to pay for its goods, its label, its packing, its fee and its share of the returns, so on the worked example each one loses $49.07.
Pages that rank for the break-even ROAS formula give 100 percent as the answer. It is the point where the ad costs what it brought in, before a single cost of the order is paid.
Google Ads takes a target ROAS as a percentage. Its own formula is conversion value ÷ ad spend × 100%, and its example is a shoe store that sets 500% to get five dollars of sales for each dollar spent. So a breakeven of 2.59 goes in as 259%, and the target that keeps $10.00 an order goes in as 382%.
Meta’s minimum ROAS control tries to keep the ROAS above the amount you enter while it looks for the most purchase value. What Meta divides is the purchase value your pixel or the Conversions API sends, attributed to the ad and in part modelled, so hold it against the breakeven on that same value.
Set either target above breakeven, not on it. At breakeven the ad takes everything the orders leave, and a month of it earns nothing.
Breakeven on the first order is a choice. If customers come back, a first order can be allowed to lose money, as long as you know what the second and third orders bring and how soon they come. Shopify’s guide to customer acquisition cost counts first-time customers only, and calls a lifetime value of three to five times that cost a sign the spending works.
The check that does not depend on which ad got the credit is the marketing efficiency ratio: all of the store’s revenue divided by all of its marketing spend, as Shopify’s guide to it sets out. Run it each month beside the platform’s ROAS, and when the two drift apart, look at what each one counts before you change a budget.
The one your own numbers give. A store that keeps 70 percent of each sale after every cost breaks even at 1.43; one that keeps 25 percent needs 4.00. I do not print a benchmark here, because the “good ROAS” figures I found on the first page of results carried no source.
Yes. Both are paid on every order the ad brings in. On the worked example the label, the packing, the card fee and the other fees come to $14.31 on an $80.00 order, which moves breakeven from 1.54 to 2.12 before a single return is counted.
From a Shopify store, the events carry the order’s total price, which Shopify describes as the item prices including duties, taxes and discounts. Shopify’s page does not say whether shipping sits inside that figure, so compare one order in Meta’s Events Manager with the same order in Shopify before you trust either breakeven.
In Google Ads, only when you upload them as conversion adjustments, which Google accepts within 54 days. Shopify’s own marketing report counts sales after returns. I found nothing in Meta’s help pages saying refunds come off its purchase value, so this page does not assume they do.
Breakeven is where the ad takes everything an order leaves and the order makes nothing. The target keeps the profit you want: the value divided by what is left after that profit. On the worked example, keeping $10.00 an order moves the line from 2.59 to 3.82.
The same thing, shortened: break-even return on ad spend. Some tools call the matching cost per order BECPA, which is the “most an order can spend on ads” line on this page.
No, while the page’s script is running: the sums run in your browser. The link you copy carries the fields, so whoever opens it sees the same result. With JavaScript turned off the page still works, and then the fields travel to my server in the address, the same way a copied link does.
The costs this page leaves out, the ones a store pays every month before any ad runs, priced line by line.
The real monthly cost of a small online storeThe plan is the smallest line. The percentage on every sale, the apps and the renewals are the bill, and two of them grow with you. How to read your own statement.Read the guide →Next step · Norvahl, one designer-engineer, both tradesTaking on projects
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