How much has to come in before anything is yours?
Seven or eight questions, about two minutes. If you know what a job costs you, this works from your own numbers. If you only know roughly what's left after costs, it works from that instead. If you know neither, it says so and stops rather than borrowing someone else's average.
Free, and no card. There is one question here most owners can't answer — saying so is a real answer.
Informational only — not audit, attest, legal, tax, or investment advice. Break-even is arithmetic on the figures you enter; it is only as good as they are.
Break-even is one division, and almost nobody has the second number
The arithmetic is not the hard part. Fixed costs divided by what each sale leaves behind after its own costs gives the number of sales a month that has to happen before anything is yours. Anyone can do that division. The reason most owners cannot tell you their break-even is not the maths — it is that the second number, the amount each sale actually leaves behind, is not something most small businesses track.
That is where break-even calculators usually go wrong. Asked for a cost they do not have, people put in a guess, or the tool quietly applies a typical margin for the industry, and out comes a figure that carries all the authority of a calculation and none of the grounding. It then gets used: to decide whether a quiet month was survivable, whether a hire is affordable, whether a price rise is needed. A wrong break-even does not announce itself — it just makes every decision downstream slightly wrong in the same direction.
So this one has two honest routes and one honest stop. If you know your cost per job, it works from that. If you only know your gross margin, it works from that and names the assumption it is making. If you know neither, it says so and produces nothing, because the useful output at that point is not a number — it is knowing which number to go and find.
Frequently asked questions
What if I don't know what a job costs me to deliver?
Then the tool asks for your gross margin instead, and works from that. If you know neither, it returns no break-even at all and tells you why. It will not substitute an industry average — a break-even built on someone else's margin looks exactly as confident as a real one, and it is the number you would then run the business on.
Why does it ask whether my own pay is in the fixed costs?
Because a break-even that does not pay the owner is not break-even. If your pay is excluded, the figure is the point at which the business covers itself and pays you nothing, and everything you need to live sits on top of it. Only you can say which figure you entered, so the tool asks rather than assumes.
What happens if my costs are higher than my price?
It refuses to divide. When each sale costs more to deliver than it brings in, there is no volume that reaches break-even — selling more makes the hole deeper. Rather than return a very large number that looks like a target, the tool states that the price or the cost has to change before any volume question is worth asking.
Is break-even the same as profitable?
No. Break-even is the floor: the point where the money coming in covers the money going out and nothing is left. It says nothing about whether the price is right, whether the costs are sensible, or how much you should be making. Those are separate questions.