Break-Even Calculator
Find your break-even point in units and revenue instantly. Essential for pricing, planning and startup financial decisions. Free, no signup.
Break-Even Calculator Tool
What-If Scenario
GST note: Enter all prices ex-GST for accurate contribution margin and break-even calculations. If you are GST-registered, your selling price and variable costs should both be stated excluding GST.
How to Use the Break-Even Calculator
Enter your monthly fixed costs
Include all costs that stay constant regardless of sales volume: rent, full-time staff salaries, insurance, subscriptions and any monthly loan repayments. Hover the tooltip icon for guidance on what counts as a fixed cost.
Enter variable cost and selling price per unit
Variable cost is everything that increases with each unit sold — materials, packaging, per-unit shipping and per-unit commission. Selling price is what the customer pays, excluding GST. Results update instantly as you type.
Read your break-even units and revenue
The calculator shows the minimum units you must sell every month to cover all costs — and the monthly revenue target that represents. The bar chart visualises fixed costs, variable costs and revenue at the break-even point.
Use What-If to test different sales volumes
Enter a target monthly sales volume in the What-If box to instantly see whether that volume generates a profit or a loss. Adjust your fixed costs, variable cost or price to model different scenarios.
Break-Even Analysis — The Essential Number Every Business Must Know
What Is Break-Even Analysis and Why Every Singapore Business Owner Needs to Know Their Number
Break-even analysis identifies the exact point at which total revenue equals total costs — the point where your business makes neither profit nor loss. Understanding this number is not optional; it is the single most important financial calculation a business owner can make before committing to a lease, hiring staff or setting prices. Yet research consistently shows that a majority of Singapore SMEs that fail within their first three years never properly calculated their break-even before launch.
The two cost types you need to understand are fixed costs and variable costs. Fixed costs do not change with sales volume: your monthly rent, permanent staff salaries, insurance premiums, utilities and loan repayments are the same whether you sell 10 units or 10,000 units that month. Variable costs scale directly with output: raw materials, packaging, per-unit shipping, sales commission and per-unit payment processing fees are all variable. Your break-even point is where the contribution from each unit sold has collectively covered all fixed costs for the month.
Singapore's commercial property market makes break-even analysis particularly critical. HDB commercial unit rents have increased by approximately 40% since 2019, according to commercial real estate data — meaning a new F&B operator today is starting with a significantly higher fixed cost base than competitors who signed leases five years ago. A common mistake is for entrepreneurs to include only the visible lease cost and forget to add their own salary as a fixed cost. If you intend to pay yourself, your break-even must include that salary — otherwise you are effectively subsidising the business with unpaid labour.
Contribution Margin Explained: The Key to Smarter Pricing Decisions
The contribution margin is the bridge between individual unit economics and overall business profitability. It is calculated as: Selling Price per Unit − Variable Cost per Unit. The result is what each unit sold "contributes" towards covering fixed costs. Once you have sold enough units to cover all fixed costs for the month, every additional unit sold converts its full contribution margin directly into profit.
A higher contribution margin means fewer units are needed to break even. This is why businesses with high-variable-cost, low-margin products are so vulnerable to volume fluctuations — a 10% drop in sales has a disproportionate impact on profit. Conversely, a software company with near-zero variable cost per user has an extremely high contribution margin, which is why SaaS businesses can sustain operating losses in early growth phases while remaining structurally sound.
For multi-product businesses, the contribution margin approach helps you decide where to focus. If Product A has a contribution margin of $40 per unit and Product B has a contribution margin of $12 per unit, your limited sales and marketing budget should be directed towards Product A — even if Product B has a higher gross margin percentage. Singapore F&B operators use this logic to build menus: the items with the highest contribution margin (not necessarily the highest-price items) are promoted most aggressively.
There is a danger zone to watch for: if your selling price falls below your variable cost, your contribution margin becomes negative. Every unit you sell increases your loss. This can happen through aggressive discounting, rising raw material costs or platform fee increases on Shopee and Lazada. The warning indicator in this calculator alerts you immediately if this occurs.
"The #1 mistake Singapore food entrepreneurs make is committing to high-rent locations before calculating break-even. A $10,000 monthly rent requires selling 2,500 cups of $5 coffee — just to cover rent alone."
Real Break-Even Examples: F&B, Retail and SaaS Businesses in ASEAN
F&B example — Coffee shop, Singapore: Fixed costs $15,000/month (rent $8,000 + 3 staff $6,000 + utilities and insurance $1,000). Variable cost per cup $1.50 (coffee, milk, cup, lid). Selling price per cup $5.50. Contribution margin = $5.50 − $1.50 = $4.00 per cup. Break-even = $15,000 ÷ $4.00 = 3,750 cups per month — about 125 cups per day for 30 days. For context, a busy hawker stall might serve 200 cups on a good day but struggles on rainy Sundays. This is why many Singapore coffee shops operate on a knife edge.
E-commerce example — Shopee seller: Fixed costs $2,000/month (packaging overhead, marketing retainer). Variable cost per unit $8 (product cost $5.50 + platform fees 5% + shipping $1.00 net of seller voucher). Selling price $25. Contribution margin = $25 − $8 = $17 per unit. Break-even = $2,000 ÷ $17 = 118 units per month. With Shopee's 11.11 and 12.12 sale volumes, this seller can be comfortably profitable in peak months but loss-making in quiet months if fixed costs are not managed down.
SaaS example — B2B software, Singapore: Fixed costs $20,000/month (two engineers $14,000, office and tools $4,000, marketing $2,000). Variable cost per subscriber $5/month (cloud hosting, support). Selling price $50/month per subscriber. Contribution margin = $50 − $5 = $45. Break-even = $20,000 ÷ $45 = 445 subscribers. At 500 subscribers the business is profitable; at 400 it is loss-making. This is why SaaS fundraising is often about reaching break-even subscriber count before runway runs out.
10 Facts About Break-Even Analysis
Approximately 60% of Singapore SMEs fail within their first three years — with cash flow mismanagement and unrealistic pricing cited as primary causes.
Break-even analysis was formalised as a management accounting technique in the early 20th century by engineer Walter Rautenstrauch, though its principles date to classical economics.
Singapore's average hawker stall rent is approximately $1,000–$3,000/month — against which a $3.50 dish must sell 400–1,200 portions monthly just to cover rent.
The concept of contribution margin was introduced to management accounting by Jonathan Harris in 1936 and remains one of the most practical metrics for small businesses.
A 10% price cut on a product with 30% gross margin requires a 50% increase in sales volume to maintain the same profit — illustrating why discounting is dangerous.
Singapore's Jurong Innovation District and one-north provide shared office space to reduce fixed costs for early-stage companies, directly lowering the break-even point.
Shopee's seller fees of approximately 3–7% per sale add directly to the variable cost per unit, raising the break-even volume compared to direct sales.
The margin of safety (actual sales minus break-even sales) tells you how much your sales can fall before losses begin — a key metric for business risk assessment.
SaaS businesses typically reach break-even later than physical goods businesses but have contribution margins of 70–90%, making them highly profitable once the threshold is crossed.
Indonesia's GoFoodFestival food court model explicitly teaches participating vendors to calculate their break-even before committing — a practice that has measurably reduced food stall failures.
Frequently Asked Questions
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The break-even point is the level of sales at which your total revenue exactly equals your total costs — making neither profit nor loss. It is expressed in units per period (e.g. 500 units/month) and in revenue (e.g. $12,500/month). Selling below this level produces a loss; selling above it produces a profit.
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Fixed costs do not change with output: rent, full-time salaries, insurance, subscription software and monthly loan repayments are all fixed. Variable costs scale with each unit produced or sold: raw materials, packaging, per-unit shipping, sales commission and per-unit payment processing fees are variable. Semi-variable costs (e.g. a part-time worker paid only when needed) can be split between the two categories.
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Contribution margin = Selling Price per Unit − Variable Cost per Unit. It represents how much each unit sold contributes towards covering fixed costs. Once fixed costs are fully covered, each additional unit sold converts its contribution margin entirely into profit. A higher contribution margin means fewer units are required to break even.
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Raising your selling price increases the contribution margin per unit, which directly lowers the break-even volume. For example, if your contribution margin increases from $10 to $12 per unit (a 20% increase), your break-even volume drops by approximately 17%. Even a modest price increase can have a dramatic effect on break-even, which is why pricing is often the fastest lever for improving business viability.
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For multiple products, use the weighted average contribution margin approach: calculate the contribution margin for each product, weight it by its expected share of total sales (sales mix), and use the weighted average as the contribution margin in the break-even formula. This calculator handles single-product break-even; for multi-product analysis, run separate calculations for each product's contribution margin and divide total fixed costs proportionally.
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There is no universal "good" break-even point — it depends entirely on your realistic achievable sales volume. The key test is: can you realistically sell above your break-even volume consistently, with a reasonable margin of safety? For Singapore F&B, a coffee shop breaking even at 125 cups per day is achievable in a good location. An e-commerce seller breaking even at 500 units/month needs to verify that market demand supports it before signing warehouse leases.
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You can lower your break-even point by: (1) reducing fixed costs — renegotiating rent, switching to co-working, reducing permanent headcount; (2) reducing variable costs — better supplier terms, bulk purchasing, packaging optimisation; (3) raising selling price — even a 5–10% price increase dramatically improves contribution margin. Use this calculator to model the impact of each change before implementing it in your business.
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Standard break-even analysis does not account for income tax, as taxes are calculated on profit — not on the break-even quantity itself. For after-tax break-even, divide your desired after-tax profit (zero, in the basic break-even case) by (1 − tax rate) to find the required before-tax profit, then add that to fixed costs. For most early-stage SME planning, the standard pre-tax break-even is sufficient.
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Break-even is the minimum viability threshold: zero profit, zero loss. Profitability begins only after you exceed the break-even point. For a business to be sustainably profitable, it needs to sell consistently above break-even with a sufficient margin of safety — typically 20–30% above break-even is considered a healthy buffer. Use the What-If scenario in this calculator to model target profit levels: enter your desired monthly profit and add it to fixed costs, then recalculate break-even.
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Yes — 100% free, forever. No account, no subscription, no hidden limits. RECATOOLS is funded by contextual advertising, not paywalls. All features — break-even calculation, contribution margin, what-if scenario and the bar chart — are available with no restrictions and no sign-in required.
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