Free tool
Markup and margin aren't the same thing — and mixing them up quietly eats your profit. Enter your job cost below to see exactly what to charge and what you'll actually keep.
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Charge your customer
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Profit
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Profit margin
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Enter your job cost and a percentage to see what to charge.
They sound interchangeable, but they're measured against different numbers — and that gap is where contractors lose money.
Markup is your profit as a percentage of what the job cost you. Margin is your profit as a percentage of what you charged. So a 50% markup isn't a 50% margin — it's only 33%.
If you "add 30%" to your costs thinking you're keeping 30%, you're actually keeping about 23%. On a $10,000 job that's roughly $700 you assumed was profit but wasn't.
| If your markup is… | …your margin is |
|---|---|
| 10% | 9.1% |
| 25% | 20.0% |
| 50% | 33.3% |
| 100% | 50.0% |
Rule of thumb: decide the margin you need to stay profitable, then use the calculator above to find the markup that gets you there.
Bidrails keeps every quote, win rate, and average deal size in one place — so you can see which jobs actually make you money.
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