Calculator
ROAS Calculator
Return on ad spend, true profit per click, and the break-even ROAS your campaign needs to hit. Plug in your numbers and see whether your ads are actually making money.
Campaign inputs
Total sales attributed to this ad spend.
Revenue minus cost of goods, before ad spend. e.g. 40% means £40 gross profit on every £100 sold.
Used to calculate CPA, CPC and conversion rate.
Calculations happen entirely in your browser. No tracking pixels, no data sent.
Per-click & per-conversion
Spend → revenue → profit
ROAS shows revenue per £1 of ad spend. It ignores cost of goods — that's why "Break-even ROAS" matters: with a 40% gross margin, you need ROAS above 2.5x just to stop losing money.
How the ROAS calculator works
ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) by itself can be misleading — a 3× ROAS sounds great until you realise your gross margin is 25%, meaning you've lost money on every sale. This calculator combines ROAS, gross margin, average order value and CPA into a single picture so you can see whether a campaign is actually profitable, not just busy.
The formulas
- ROAS = Revenue ÷ Ad Spend
- Break-even ROAS = 1 ÷ Gross margin %
- CPA = Ad Spend ÷ Conversions
- Profit = (Revenue × Margin) − Ad Spend
Worked example
Scenario: £2,000 spent on Meta Ads, 50 orders at £80 AOV, 30% gross margin.
Revenue: 50 × £80 = £4,000
ROAS: £4,000 ÷ £2,000 = 2.0×
Break-even ROAS: 1 ÷ 0.30 = 3.33×
Verdict: Loss-making. Gross profit £1,200, ad spend £2,000 → £800 lost.
To break even you'd need to either lift ROAS to 3.33× (better creative/targeting), grow margin (raise prices, cut COGS), or increase AOV.
Frequently asked questions
What is ROAS?
ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) is revenue generated divided by ad spend. A ROAS of 4 means you got £4 of revenue for every £1 spent on ads. It's the headline marketing metric, but on its own it doesn't tell you whether the ads are profitable — for that you need to factor in product margin.
What is break-even ROAS?
Break-even ROAS is the minimum ROAS you need for the campaign to cover its costs. If your gross margin is 25%, your break-even ROAS is 1 ÷ 0.25 = 4. Anything below 4× ROAS loses money even if it generates revenue. Higher-margin products tolerate lower ROAS targets.
What's a 'good' ROAS?
It depends entirely on your margin. Software with 80% margin can be profitable at 1.5× ROAS; physical goods at 25% margin need 4×+ just to break even, and probably 6×+ to be worth running. The right benchmark is always 'comfortably above your break-even', not an industry average.
What's the difference between ROAS and ROI?
ROAS uses revenue; ROI uses profit. ROAS = Revenue ÷ Spend. ROI = (Profit − Spend) ÷ Spend. ROI is more honest about whether you actually made money, but ROAS is easier to track inside ad platforms because they only see revenue.
How does CPA fit in?
CPA (Cost Per Acquisition) is what it costs you to get one customer. If your average order value is £80 and your margin is 30%, you make £24 per order — so any CPA under £24 is profitable, and your target CPA should be well below that to leave room for fixed costs.
Should I optimise for ROAS or volume?
Both, in tension. A very high ROAS campaign usually means you're under-spending and missing volume; a very low ROAS means you're over-bidding for clicks that don't convert. The sweet spot is the spend level where incremental ROAS is just above break-even — that's profit-maximising, not ratio-maximising.