Calculator
ACoS and breakeven ACoS calculator
Work out your ACoS from ad spend and sales, or the breakeven ACoS where an ad sale stops making money.
- Free, no sign-up
Enter your ad spend and the sales Amazon credits to those ads, from the same date range.
ACoS
ROAS
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How to calculate ACoS
- 1Take your ad spend and the sales Amazon credits to those ads, from the same date range. Leave off the last few days if you want a figure that won't keep moving, since an order can be credited to a click days after it happened.
- 2Divide spend by sales and multiply by 100. Spend $250 on ads that bring in $1,000 in attributed sales and your ACoS is 25%. ROAS is the same two numbers the other way up, so that's a ROAS of 4.
- 3Check it against your breakeven ACoS, the share of the price you keep before ads. ACoS alone doesn't say whether an ad sale made money. For which sales count, see what does ACoS mean.
FAQ
What's the ACoS formula?
ACoS = ad spend ÷ attributed sales × 100
Spend $180 on ads that Amazon credits with $600 in sales and your ACoS is 30%. Every $1 of ad sales cost 30 cents in ads. Turn it the other way up, $600 ÷ $180, and that’s a ROAS of 3.33.
Use only the sales Amazon credits to your ads. Divide the same spend by total sales and you get TACoS, which the TACoS calculator works out next to ACoS.
Why would I want a breakeven ACoS?
If your goal is to increase your total sales by as much as possible, then running your ads at breakeven (or even at a loss!) is one of the best ways to do this.
Why? The answer lies in how Amazon's A9 algorithm ranks products. Essentially, the more your product sells, the higher it ranks. Higher rankings, in turn, drive more organic (non-advertising) sales, helping to push your product's rank higher.
There is also the review factor. The more sales your product gets, the more reviews it gets, leading to higher conversion rates and, in turn, higher sales.
In short, if you can afford to run your ads at breakeven, then it is one of the quickest ways to have your best year yet on Amazon!
Breakeven ACoS Formula
The breakeven ACoS is calculated by first figuring out your unit profit. For Merch products, it's simply your royalties. For physical products, it will be your product's sales price, minus your cost of goods, minus your Amazon fees.
If you are selling a t-shirt for $20 with a $3 unit profit, then you know you can spend $3 per sale in ads to breakeven (because your $3 unit profit - your $3 in advertising per sale = $0 net profit).
Your breakeven ACoS is then your unit profit divided by your sales price, or $3 unit profit / $20 sale price = 0.15 = 15%.
What's a good ACoS?
One under your breakeven ACoS, by as much profit as you want each ad sale to keep. Breakeven is your margin before ads, so no single ACoS works for every product.
Take the physical product example above. A $25 sale price, $8 COGS and $4 in Amazon fees leave $13 a unit, a 52% breakeven ACoS. At a 40% ACoS, $10 of each ad sale goes to ads and $3 is profit. On a product with a 20% margin, the same 40% loses money on every ad sale.
Where you set the target under breakeven depends on what the product needs. A launch might run at breakeven on purpose, to buy reviews and rank, while a mature product can sit well under it. What is a good ACoS on Amazon and choosing your target ACoS go through that choice.
Merch Jar’s Dynamic Bid Management template moves each bid toward the target you set. It’s saved switched off and only changes bids after you turn it on.