// saas margin calculator
Your SaaS margin, after the cloud bill.
At $29 a month, 200 customers and $4 of cloud and API costs each, you keep a 80.47% gross margin and break even on $1,500 of fixed costs at 65 customers. Put in your own costs to see yours.
SaaS margin calculator
This month
You keep $3,167.40 a month, at a 80.47% gross margin.
Per customer, per month
Gross margin = revenue minus payment fees and the cost of serving customers. Break-even = fixed costs divided by what each customer contributes, rounded up. Fees are Pocketsflow's, with sales tax and VAT handled.
Every cost is your own input: cloud and AI prices change too often to guess. Payment fees are Pocketsflow's 4.7% + $0.30 per monthly payment. Churn, growth and annual plans are not modelled here; for those, try the subscription calculator.
// the formula
Four numbers that matter.
Worked on the calculator's sample: $29 a month, 200 customers, $4 to serve each and $1,500 of fixed costs.
Gross margin
(revenue - fees - cost to serve) / revenue
$29 × 200 = $5,800 of revenue, less $332.60 of fees and $800 of cloud costs: 80.47%.
Net profit
gross profit - fixed costs
$4,667.40 of gross profit less $1,500 of fixed costs leaves $3,167.40 a month.
Contribution
price - fee - cost to serve
What one customer adds: $29 - $1.66 - $4.00 = $23.34.
Break-even
fixed costs / contribution, rounded up
$1,500 / $23.34 = 65 customers. Never, if a customer costs more than they pay.
// what to count
Costs people forget.
Pull these from your own bills. Usage-based lines go per customer; the rest are fixed.
Per customer
Cloud compute and serverless calls
Database and storage per customer
AI API tokens (model calls)
Transactional email and SMS
Bandwidth and file delivery
Third-party APIs billed per seat or per call
Fixed each month
Hosting base plan and domains
Monitoring, logging and error tracking
Software subscriptions and tools
Salaries and contractors (optional)
Selling your SaaS on Pocketsflow? Subscriptions and checkout are on the Free plan, and 4.7% + $0.30 covers processing and sales tax and VAT as merchant of record. See what is included, or compare Stripe and PayPal fees.
// faq
Common questions.
What is a good gross margin for a SaaS?
Software usually runs at a high gross margin because one more customer costs little to serve; many SaaS businesses aim for 70% or more. AI products that call a model on every request often land lower, so watch the cost per customer as usage grows.
What counts as a cost per customer, and what is fixed?
A cost per customer grows with every customer you add: compute, database and storage, AI API calls, email and SMS, per-seat tools. A fixed cost stays the same with zero customers: the hosting base plan, domains, monitoring, software subscriptions and salaries.
How do I estimate my cloud and AI cost per customer?
Take last month's usage-based bills (cloud, AI API, email) and divide by your active paying customers. Heavy users pull the average up, so recheck it whenever usage or your model provider's prices change.
How do I work out how many customers I need to break even?
Divide your fixed costs by what one customer contributes after fees and cost to serve, and round up. At $29 a month with $4 of costs per customer and $1,500 of fixed costs, that is 65 customers.
Which payment fee does the calculator use?
Pocketsflow's 4.7% + $0.30 per monthly payment on the Free plan. It includes card processing and, as merchant of record, collecting and remitting sales tax and VAT. Selling $50,000 or more a month? The Volume plans lower the platform fee to 1% or 0.5%.
Should payment fees count against gross margin?
Finance teams differ. Here they do, because they grow with every sale like any cost to serve. Leave them out and your gross margin reads a few points higher; net profit does not change.
// more free tools
Plan the rest of your launch.
Free, no sign-up. When you are ready to sell, the same numbers run your store: see pricing.
- Fee calculatorWhat each platform takes from a sale, and what you keep each month.
- Profit calculatorYour real monthly profit after fees, refunds, ads and costs.
- Payment fee calculatorWhat Stripe, PayPal and Pocketsflow take from a payment.
- Subscription calculatorMRR, ARR, churn and lifetime value, projected 12 months out.
- Discount calculatorThe extra sales a discount needs before it pays off.
- Affiliate commission calculatorWhat affiliates earn, what you keep, and the highest rate you can afford.
- Revenue forecastChart 24 months of compounding growth and the month you hit your goal.
- Break-even calculatorThe sales that cover your costs, where revenue crosses total cost.
- A/B test calculatorWhether your test winner is real, with each version's range charted.
- Funnel calculatorChart each step from visitor to buyer and find the biggest drop.
- CAC payback calculatorThe month a customer pays back what they cost to win.
- Newsletter revenue calculatorFree and paid subscribers, and newsletter revenue, a year out.
- EU VAT calculatorAdd or remove VAT at every member state's 2026 rate.
- Launch checklist24 steps from idea to first sales, saved as you go.
- Pricing guideSet a price from value, build three tiers, and see the sales a goal takes.
Open your store today.
Sell your first product in minutes, keep more of every sale, and let the AI you already use run the busywork.