How this works
Margin and markup are both about the gap between cost and selling price, but they're calculated against different bases — margin is profit as a percentage of the selling price, markup is profit as a percentage of the cost. The two numbers are never equal (markup is always higher), and mixing them up is a common pricing mistake.
Common questions
Why is my markup percentage higher than my margin percentage?
Because markup is measured against the smaller number (cost) and margin against the larger one (selling price) — for the exact same profit amount, dividing by a smaller base always gives a bigger percentage. A 50% margin, for example, works out to a 100% markup.
If I want a 30% margin, what markup should I price at?
Roughly 43% — the conversion is markup = margin ÷ (1 − margin), so a 30% margin needs a 30 ÷ 0.70 ≈ 42.9% markup on cost. Enter your cost and try different selling prices here to see the margin update directly, rather than doing the conversion by hand.