Embroidery Pricing Calculator
Price an embroidery job from stitch count, garment/backing/labor cost and target margin — a planning estimate, not a guaranteed production quote.
$8.33 per unit, pre-tax
Unit cost $5.00 — margin 40.0%, markup 66.7%.
| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| Fixed cost | $200.00 |
| Variable cost per unit | $3.00 |
| Job cost | $500.00 |
| Unit cost | $5.00 |
| Selling price (pre-tax) | $8.33 |
| Selling price (with tax) | $8.33 |
| Profit per unit | $3.33 |
| Margin | 40.00% |
| Markup | 66.67% |
| Quantity | Unit cost | Price |
|---|---|---|
| 12 | $19.67 | $32.78 |
| 24 | $11.33 | $18.89 |
| 50 | $7.00 | $11.67 |
| 100 | $5.00 | $8.33 |
| 250 | $3.80 | $6.33 |
| 500 | $3.40 | $5.67 |
Stitch charges versus internal costs
A customer-facing “price per thousand stitches” is a selling charge, not a cost. This tool keeps it entirely separate from your internal per-garment costs (garment, backing, labor, thread changes) — the two are never summed together, so target-price mode won't silently double-count the same expense as both a cost and a charge.
Fixed and variable job costs
How this is calculated
jobCost = fixed + quantity × variable | unitCost = jobCost / quantity | price = unitCost / (1 − margin)Setup/digitizing and overhead are fixed costs that don't scale with quantity; garment, backing, labor and thread-change costs scale per unit. Spreading the same fixed cost over more units lowers unit cost, which is why bigger orders can be quoted lower per piece.
Worked example
100 garments, $200 setup, $3 variable cost each: job cost = 200 + 100 × 3 = $500; unit cost = 500 / 100 = $5. At a 40% target margin: price = 5 / (1 − 0.4) = $8.3333, a markup of 66.67%.
Margin versus markup
Margin = profit ÷ selling price. Markup = profit ÷ cost. The same job always has a lower margin percentage than markup percentage — both are shown side by side so neither gets mistaken for the other.
Quantity-break examples
The quantity-break table recalculates unit cost and price at common order sizes using your same fixed and variable cost inputs, so you can see how digitizing/setup cost dilutes as quantity grows.
- Wastage
- Applied as a percentage increase to variable cost per unit.
- Estimate only
- This is a planning tool — always confirm your final quote against your actual supplier and machine-time costs.
Questions
Is margin the same as markup?
No. Margin is profit divided by selling price (what fraction of the price is profit); markup is profit divided by cost (how much you add on top of cost). The same dollar profit produces a lower margin percentage than markup percentage — for example, a $5 cost priced at $8.33 has a 40% margin but a 66.67% markup. Confusing the two is a common pricing mistake.
How should digitizing fees be allocated?
A one-time digitizing/setup fee is a fixed cost — it doesn't scale with quantity, so spreading it over more units lowers the per-unit cost. This tool adds setup and overhead as fixed costs before dividing by quantity, which is why the quantity-break table shows unit cost falling as order size grows, even though the per-garment variable cost stays the same.