Is my Facebook ad profitable?
E-commerce and DTC sellers often judge ads by ROAS alone, a 4x or 5x looks healthy in Meta Ads Manager. But ROAS only compares revenue to ad spend. It says nothing about what you actually keep after COGS, shipping, payment fees and returns. That gap is where most sellers quietly bleed money while thinking they're scaling.
Break-even ROAS closes that gap. Enter your selling price and per-order costs, and this calculator tells you the minimum ROAS your ads must hit before you make a single unit of profit. If your current ROAS sits below that number, you're funding Meta to lose money on every order.
ROAS vs profit, why a 5x ROAS can still lose money
Imagine you sell a dress for 2,500. COGS is 1,200, shipping 200 and a payment fee of 3% (75). Your profit per order before ads is 1,025, a 41% margin. Break-even ROAS is roughly 2.4x. Now you run ads at 4x ROAS and feel great. But after product costs, you're only keeping about 600 per order from ad-driven sales, and that's before ad spend itself. The higher your COGS and fees, the higher your break-even climbs. A seller with 80% margins breaks even at 1.25x; one with 20% margins needs 5x just to cover the product.
Include your management and creative costs too
This tool calculates product-level break-even, what you need from ad revenue to cover fulfilment. It does not include ad management fees, freelancer retainers, product photography or UGC creator costs. If you pay 30,000/month for an agency on top of 100,000 ad spend, your true break-even ROAS is higher than this calculator shows. Treat the result as your floor, then add overhead on top before deciding to scale.
Sample break-even ROAS by category
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| Scenario | Price | COGS | Shipping | Fee | Break-even |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fashion (low margin) | 2,500 | 1,200 | 200 | 3% payment fee | 2.4x |
| Beauty (mid margin) | 4,500 | 1,800 | 250 | 150 | 2.0x |
| Electronics (thin margin) | 8,000 | 6,200 | 350 | 2.5% gateway | 6.4x |
| Supplements (high margin) | 3,200 | 900 | 250 | 3% payment fee | 1.6x |
What's a good ROAS?
There is no universal “good” ROAS, only a good ROAS for your margins. Fashion and general e-commerce often need 2.5–3.5x to be safely profitable after returns and shipping costs. Beauty and supplements with higher margins might break even at 1.8–2.5x. Electronics with thin margins can require 4x or more. Use this calculator with your actual numbers instead of copying a competitor's reported ROAS.
ROAS vs ACOS
Meta advertisers think in ROAS (revenue ÷ ad spend). Amazon and marketplace sellers often think in ACOS (ad spend ÷ revenue). They're reciprocals: 4x ROAS = 25% ACOS, 2x ROAS = 50% ACOS. If you come from a marketplace background, divide 1 by your target ACOS to get your ROAS target, then compare it to the break-even this calculator gives you.
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Break-even ROAS is the minimum return on ad spend your campaigns need to cover your product costs (COGS, shipping, payment fees and other per-order costs) without losing money. If your break-even is 2.5x, every 1,000 you spend on ads must generate at least 2,500 in revenue just to break even on the product side.
ROAS only compares ad revenue to ad spend. It ignores what it costs you to fulfil each order. A fashion seller with 2,500 AOV but 2,000 in COGS, shipping and payment fees has a break-even around 5x, so a 4x ROAS looks great in Ads Manager but still loses money on every sale after product costs.
It depends on your margin. Low-margin categories like fashion often need 2.5–3.5x to be safely profitable after all costs. Higher-margin beauty or specialty products might break even at 2–2.5x. Use this calculator with your actual costs rather than chasing a generic benchmark.
This calculator covers product-level costs only, COGS, shipping and payment fees. Ad management fees, creative production and returns are real costs too. If you pay 25,000/month for management, add that to your ad spend mentally when judging whether a campaign is worth scaling.
ROAS (return on ad spend) is revenue divided by ad spend (higher is better. ACOS (advertising cost of sales) is ad spend divided by revenue) lower is better. A 4x ROAS equals 25% ACOS. E-commerce sellers on Amazon often think in ACOS; Meta advertisers usually think in ROAS, they're two sides of the same ratio.
Break-even ROAS = selling price ÷ profit per order before ads. Profit per order is your price minus COGS, shipping and payment fees. Example: a 3,000 product with 1,800 in total per-order costs leaves 1,200 profit, so break-even ROAS is 3,000 ÷ 1,200 = 2.5x.
Significantly. If 25% of orders are returned, you pay shipping both ways on those parcels and lose the sale. That raises your effective per-order cost and pushes break-even ROAS higher, often by 0.5–1.0x. Add expected return costs to your fees when calculating.