The Meta Ads Break-Even Calculator finds the two numbers that govern every Meta campaign: the break-even ROAS (the return on ad spend at which a campaign exactly covers its ad cost and fulfilment costs) and the target ROAS that leaves a real profit margin. Enter your margin directly, or enter a product's revenue and COGS and let it derive the margin, then optionally add ad spend, your actual ROAS, and an attribution discount to see where you truly stand.
How It Works
The target builds in a 20% cushion: hit it and each order keeps a fifth of its contribution as profit after ads. With ad spend entered, the calculator also returns the revenue you must generate to break even (spend x break-even ROAS) and the conversions that requires (spend / contribution per order). With an actual ROAS and an attribution discount entered, it computes an effective ROAS (discounting the platform's self-reported figure for over-attribution) and the net profit that implies: spend x effective ROAS x margin, minus the spend.
Parameters
| Input | Required | Meaning | |---|---|---| | Gross margin % | Either/or | Your margin, entered directly | | Revenue + COGS | Either/or | Derives margin as (revenue - COGS) / revenue | | Ad spend | No | Unlocks break-even revenue and conversions | | Average order value | No | Unlocks contribution per order | | Actual ROAS | No | Your reported campaign ROAS | | Attribution discount % | No | Haircut applied to the reported ROAS |
Worked example
A product sells for 50 of COGS and variable costs: contribution is 3,000 of ad spend you need 3,000 / 3,000 x 2.72 x 0.375 - 60. The campaign that looked comfortably profitable is, after a realistic attribution haircut, a coin flip, which is the entire reason the discount input exists.
Margin inputs: where calculators and businesses part ways
The margin you enter decides everything downstream, and the commonest failure is entering a gross margin that stops at product cost. The margin this formula needs is contribution: after COGS, shipping subsidy, packaging, payment processing, platform and app fees, and an allowance for returns (returns reverse revenue but not ad spend, so a 10% return rate silently converts a 40% margin into roughly 36%). If your margin is under about 25%, the break-even ROAS exceeds 4, and cold-traffic Meta campaigns rarely sustain that; the calculator's output then is not a media target but a business-model finding, pointing at price, bundle, or AOV work before media work. Conversely, digital products at 85 to 90% margins have break-evens near 1.15 and can rationally buy growth that would bankrupt a physical-goods store at the same ROAS.
The attribution discount, used properly
Platform-reported ROAS counts conversions the platform influenced, credited under its attribution window, including view-throughs you may not value and cross-device matches you cannot verify. The discount field lets you encode your house view (many advertisers use 10 to 30% against platform reporting, or calibrate it against a holdout test or their analytics platform's deduplicated figures) and see the verdict on the discounted number instead. Use a discount derived from evidence, incrementality tests, post-purchase surveys, blended MER trends, not from pessimism: an arbitrary 50% haircut will kill good campaigns on paper while the business quietly profits. The net profit output then closes the loop between the media metric and the bank account, which is where this conversation should always end.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a good ROAS on Meta?
There is no benchmark answer, only your break-even: above your target ROAS is good, between break-even and target is survivable, below break-even is loss-making at your margin. A 2.0 ROAS is excellent for a 60%-margin store (break-even 1.67) and a slow bleed for a 35%-margin one (break-even 2.86).
Should I use revenue and COGS, or enter the margin directly?
Whichever you can state more honestly. Revenue and COGS suits a single hero product; the direct margin suits a store-wide blended figure, provided it is contribution margin after variable fulfilment costs, not catalogue gross margin.
Why is the target ROAS higher than break-even?
Because break-even spends the entire contribution on ads and leaves nothing for profit, fixed costs, or error. The target reserves 20% of contribution, the calculator's built-in safety margin; businesses with heavy fixed costs should hold an even larger reserve and treat the target as a floor, not a goal.