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Break-even ROAS for Facebook, Instagram and Google ads

Type in one order, what it costs you and where your ad sends buyers: a Shopify store, an Etsy listing or an Amazon listing. You'll see what an order keeps before the ad, the ROAS your ads need (and Google's percent), and, with your spend and ROAS, what the ads gain or lose a month.

Where your ad sends buyers

What the buyer pays for the item. Counted as one item an order.

0 if free.

Materials, or what you pay for it. On Amazon, what one unit costs you delivered.

0 if Amazon ships it for you.

The share refunded in full, such as 5%. Blank counts no refunds.

Your plan

It sets the card rate on Shopify Payments.

Meta Ads Manager or Google Ads. With your ROAS, it shows what the ads gain or lose a month.

Your ad results

Ad revenue ÷ ad spend, last 30 days, such as 2.5.

Add more detail (optional)1 of 2 filled

Box, tissue, tape. Blank uses a typical $1.

From every source, from your own records. Checks the ad platform's count. Needs your ad spend.

Your numbers stay in this page. Nothing is sent or stored.

Example shop, not yours yet. Type your numbers in the form and press “Work it out”.

Break-even ROAS

2.01 (201%)

Your ROAS of 1.6 is under it: at your numbers the ads cost about $204 a month more than they bring in.

One order an ad brings

  • Average order

    $55.00

  • Shipping the buyer pays

    $5.00

  • Order total

    item + shipping

    $60.00

  • Card fee (Shopify Payments, Basic)

    2.9% × $60.00 + $0.30

    −$2.04

  • Product cost

    −$18.00

  • Packaging

    −$0.50

  • Shipping label

    −$7.50

  • Kept on an order that isn't refunded

    $60.00 − $2.04 fees − $26.00 costs

    $31.96

With 5% of orders refunded

  • Lost on a refunded order

    $2.04 fees not returned + $7.50 label + $0.50 packaging

    −$10.04

  • Kept on an ad order, on average, before the ad

    95% × $31.96 − 5% × $10.04

    $29.86

The break-even

  • Margin for ads

    $29.86 ÷ $60.00

    49.77%

  • Break-even ROAS

    $60.00 ÷ $29.86

    2.01

  • As Google shows it

    2.01 × 100%

    201%

  • Most an ad can cost per order

    what the order keeps before the ad

    $29.86

A month

  • Ad spend a month

    your number

    $1,000.00

  • Your ROAS

    1.6

  • Ad cost per counted order

    $60.00 ÷ 1.6

    $37.50

  • Sales the ad platform counts

    1.6 × $1,000.00

    $1,600.00

  • Orders it counts

    $1,600.00 ÷ $60.00

    26.7

  • What those orders keep

    $1,600.00 × $29.86 ÷ $60.00

    $796.27

  • Less the ad spend

    −$1,000.00

  • The ads lose a month

    $796.27 − $1,000.00

    −$203.73

The fix

  • Pause campaigns with ROAS under 2.01

    Worth at least $204 a month

    Pause or trim campaigns with ROAS under 2.01, judged on your own orders against your ad bill, not only on the ad platform's count. Raising what each order keeps (price, shipping charged, product cost) lowers the break-even too. If your other orders hold, you'd keep at least $204 more a month, even if every ad sale stopped. Ads can bring buyers who come back later, and ad platforms count some sales that would have happened anyway, so ROAS can be off either way. Count repeat orders only if you know your repeat rate.

Good to know

  • Meta and Google count purchases with their own attribution windows: Google's default is 30 days after a click ("the default window is 30 days", Google Ads Help), and Meta can count a purchase made a day after someone only saw an ad. Meta says "statistical modeling may be used to account for some events" (Meta Business Help Center). Both may count sales you'd have had anyway, so their ROAS can differ from what your store sees. Compare with your own orders: your sales ÷ your ad bill, month by month (sources read October 15, 2026).
  • Card fees are Shopify Payments' online rate for your plan on a standard US card. Shopify doesn't return card fees when you refund an order (Shopify Help).
  • A refunded order is counted as a full refund: the item comes back and can be sold again, the buyer pays the return label, and you lose the label, packaging and the fees that aren't returned.
  • This is the break-even before overhead: monthly costs (plan, apps, your time) aren't counted. Buyers an ad brings who come back later aren't counted either.
  • The ROAS that pays depends on your own costs: this break-even is yours, not a rule of thumb.

Shopify fees as of October 13, 2026 (shopify.com/pricing, which carries no date, and Shopify Help, both read that day). Fixed formulas; no AI computes a number.

The rates this uses

Each one links to where it comes from, with that page’s date and the day we checked it. See every rate we use.

One number at a time, or the whole shop at once

The free check-up runs these same sums on your whole shop and shows where the money is lost, each loss with its fix and what it’s worth. About a minute, no sign-up.

Start the free check-up

More free calculators

AI agents can run the same calculators through our free MCP server: this one is the tool sellerprofit_ads_roas_breakeven.

Further reading