Break-even ROAS calculator.

How this calculator works (same formula nouz uses)

ROAS — return on ad spend, or revenue ÷ ad spend — is the most-quoted number in paid ecommerce and one of the most misleading. A "2x ROAS" sounds like you doubled your money, but the order still carries COGS, shipping, fees and overhead. Break-even ROAS is the return at which your ad-driven revenue exactly covers those costs plus the ad spend itself. Below it, scaling spend scales losses.

In plain English: Break-even ROAS = AOV ÷ contribution margin per order, where contribution margin = AOV − COGS − shipping − fees − other per-order costs. Contribution margin is the money each order frees up to pay for advertising; the smaller it is as a share of AOV, the higher the ROAS you need. Set a target net margin and the calculator also returns the ROAS a genuinely profitable campaign has to clear.

A worked example

Using the defaults — AOV €60, COGS 30% of AOV, shipping €5, fees €1.50, other costs €2, and a 15% target margin:

• COGS: €60 × 30% = €18
• Total non-ad costs: €18 + €5 + €1.50 + €2 = €26.50
• Contribution margin: €60 − €26.50 = €33.50 (about 56% of AOV)
• Break-even ROAS: €60 ÷ €33.50 = 1.79x
• ROAS for a 15% net margin: €60 ÷ (€33.50 − €9) = €60 ÷ €24.50 = 2.45x

So a campaign running at 1.5x ROAS is losing money on every order, even though the ad platform reports a "positive" return. You need 1.79x just to break even and about 2.45x to earn a 15% margin.

What a healthy number looks like

There is a clean rule of thumb: break-even ROAS ≈ 1 ÷ (contribution margin as a fraction of AOV). A 50% contribution margin needs a 2.0x ROAS to break even; a 33% margin needs 3.0x; a 25% margin needs 4.0x. So "what is a good ROAS?" has no universal answer — it is set entirely by your margin. Healthy campaigns run comfortably above your break-even, not on it. If your reported ROAS sits near break-even after you have counted every cost, the campaign is treading water; if it is below, pause it.

Common mistakes

• Trusting the ad platform's ROAS as profit. It counts revenue against ad spend only — never COGS, shipping or fees.
• Using gross revenue instead of contribution margin. Break-even ROAS is driven by margin, not by AOV alone; two stores with the same AOV and different margins have very different floors.
• Chasing a fixed ROAS target across products. A high-margin SKU can be profitable at 2x while a low-margin one loses money at 3x — the floor is per product, not per store.
• Forgetting returns and support costs. Folding them into "other per-order costs" is what separates a real floor from an optimistic one.

When to use it — and what's next

Calculate your break-even ROAS once, set it as a hard floor, and scale spend only on campaigns above break-even plus your target margin. It is a per-order calculation and does not connect to Meta or Google — nouz is a simple daily profit tool, not an attribution platform, so you compare the number here against the ROAS your ad manager reports. To see whether the profit actually lands, nouz tracks it day by day; start with a live demo, or use the sibling AOV break-even calculator to find the order value behind the return.