SettingsSettings for this calculationUS
Your direct cost for materials on this job.
Use your actual supplier cost, not what you plan to charge the client.
Your direct labor cost for this job (wages, not billed rate).
Use the Labor Cost Calculator to estimate this from hours, rate, and crew size.
The percentage added on top of costs to cover overhead and profit.
Common contractor markups range from 10-20% for straightforward work up to 50%+ for complex, high-risk, or highly customized jobs.
Total price to charge
$9,600
- Cost subtotal
- $8,000
- Markup amount
- $1,600
- Gross margin on the price
- 16.67 %
They open the calculator with your figures already in it
Contractor Markup Calculator: 9,600 $ (total price to charge) — shown in imperial, US market. The link sets both, so the result they see is the one on your screen.
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How this was calculated
Formula source(s)
- Total price = (material cost + labor cost) x (1 + markup percent / 100)
Inputs used
- Material Cost
- 5000
- Labor Cost
- 3000
- Markup (%)
- 20
Intermediate steps
- Cost subtotal
- $8,000
- Markup amount
- $1,600
- Gross margin on the price
- 16.67 %
What this calculation does not cover
- Only two cost lines feed the subtotal — materials and labor. Permits, equipment and tool rental, dumpster and disposal fees, subcontractor invoices, insurance, fuel and supervision are not inputs, so anything you have not already buried inside those two figures is neither marked up nor billed.
- Materials and labor are marked up at one identical rate, because the percentage is applied once to their combined subtotal. If you price material at one percentage and labor at another — a common split — price the two separately and add the results, since a single blended figure here will not reproduce that.
- The markup amount in the breakdown is gross, not profit: it is the one figure that has to carry overhead and profit together, and there is no overhead input to separate them. Office costs, vehicles, estimating time and idle days come out of that same amount before anything is left over.
- The gross margin row is the same money expressed against the price instead of against the cost, and it is always the smaller percentage of the two — a 20 per cent markup is a 16.7 per cent margin. It is shown because the two are routinely used interchangeably and are not equal; it is still gross, so overhead has not been taken out of it, and it is not a net profit figure.
- Nothing is added after the markup — the total is exactly the subtotal multiplied by one plus your percentage. Sales tax, VAT or GST, permit fees passed through to the client, and card or financing charges all sit outside it, so the number is a price to quote rather than a finished invoice.
- The costs you enter are treated as final and already known. There is no waste allowance and no contingency term, so if supplier prices move between quote and purchase or the hours run long, the overrun comes out of the markup instead of being added to the price.
- Each cost line accepts up to 500,000 and the markup up to 200 per cent, which caps how large a single job this will price without splitting it. The currency is a label only: the answer comes back in whatever currency you typed the costs in, with no conversion and no rounding to a tidy quotable figure.
Computed in your browser — nothing you enter is uploaded. Presented in US customary units and US trade terminology. Where a formula follows a published standard, that standard and its edition are cited beside it on this page; where none governs, the page says so. Local amendments override model codes — verify against the code in force where you build.
Sources checked 2026-09-05 · in the site-wide review of 2026-09-06 · v1.0.1
Regulatory standards & verification citations1
- Total price = (material cost + labor cost) x (1 + markup percent / 100)
Cite this page
Your workspace
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