Find your Break-Even ROAS in 60 seconds.
The minimum return on ad spend your business actually needs to stay profitable. Built for $15K–$200K eCom founders.
If you don't know this number, you're scaling a leaking bucket. Most founders are surprised by how high it actually is.
Mareike Niedermeier · Founder, Sales Savvy OnlineFive inputs. One honest answer.
Most founders set ROAS targets in the dark.
If you don't know your break-even ROAS, you can't tell the difference between a winning campaign and one that's silently bleeding margin. Every ad-buying decision downstream gets cleaner once this number is locked in.
Questions we get all the time.
No. Break-even ROAS is the floor, the minimum you can't go below without losing money on every order. Your target ROAS should sit comfortably above it. For most healthy eCom stores, the target sits 30-50% above break-even.
Shipping should be rolled into your COGS percentage if the customer doesn't pay for it. Every variable cost per order, product cost, packaging, fulfilment, shipping if you eat it, payment processor fees, belongs in your COGS number for this to be honest.
That means your COGS plus your target margin already eats 100% of revenue. The fix isn't ads, it's restructuring. Raise pricing, lift AOV (bundles, upsells, subscriptions), or cut COGS. Paid acquisition can't save unit economics that don't work.
This calculator gives you a first-order break-even ROAS. If you have strong repeat purchase rates or subscription LTV, your effective break-even can be lower, because the second and third orders carry no acquisition cost. Cashflow Code covers the LTV-adjusted version in detail.
The math is exact for the inputs you give it. Accuracy comes down to your inputs being honest, particularly your true COGS percentage and your true fixed monthly costs. Most founders underestimate both. Pull your last 90 days of P&L before you trust the number.
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