Free Tool
Discount Calculator
Enter a price and a discount to see what you save and the final price, instantly. No sign-up, no email.
Your numbers
Your result
Discounts come straight off your margin. Before you discount, check what it does to your profit.
How the discount calculator works
This discount calculator does one thing: it takes an original price and a percentage off, then tells you exactly what the customer pays and what you're giving up. No hidden formulas. No rounding tricks.
The maths is straightforward. If you have a $250 item and you apply a 20% discount, the amount saved is $250 x 0.20 = $50. The final price is $250 - $50 = $200. That's it. Move the slider to try different percentages and the result updates instantly.
It's useful for quickly sense-checking a promotional price, working out a clearance figure, or seeing what a wholesale rate actually costs you before you agree to it.
What a discount really costs you
Here's the part most business owners don't think through. A 20% discount does not reduce your profit by 20%. It reduces your revenue by 20% while your costs stay exactly the same.
Say your product costs you $150 to make or buy, and you sell it for $250. That's a $100 gross profit per unit. A 20% discount brings the price to $200. Your cost is still $150. Now your profit is $50 - half of what it was, for a 20% discount. You cut your margin by 50% to offer 20% off.
The smaller your margin, the more painful each percentage point of discount becomes. If you're running on tight margins (common in retail, services, and agency work), even a 10% discount can wipe out most of your profit on a sale. Use the profit margin calculator alongside this one to see the full picture.
Discount smarter
The goal is to win the sale without giving away more than you need to. A few approaches that protect your margin:
- Offer value instead of price - add a bonus, extend the warranty, or include a service that costs you little but is worth a lot to the customer.
- Bundle products to raise the total sale price, so a percentage discount hurts less in dollar terms.
- Set a minimum order threshold before a discount kicks in - you make more per customer even if the rate looks the same.
- Time your discounts deliberately - end-of-season, first purchase, loyalty tiers - rather than discounting on request every time.
If you want to go further, the markup calculator helps you set a price that leaves room for discounting without going underwater.
The smartest move is to automate targeted offers to the right customers at the right time, so you discount less overall and hold price with everyone else. If that's something you want to explore, book a free 30-minute call and we can walk through what that looks like for your business.